Only Time of Day
by misprint
Summary: Jack got on the train for Santa Fe and didn't look back. AU, Slash.
1. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

David Jacobs opens his eyes. His palm is alive with light.

He curls his fingers out carefully, one by one, studying them with a journalist's curious detachment. The slim bones of his hand, the clean nails, the alive, moving skin. New York's particular breed of morning is fierce and white, and in it his hand glows like a strange and luminescent spider, independent, inexplicable. He blinks. He yawns. His teeth are dirty with sleep. He pushes the sheets away.

Light leaks into his flat like water might from a tub, illuminating the dingy but serviceable baseboards, the outdated wallpaper, the minimal furnishings. It illuminates him – David Jacobs, newspaper man, twenty four years of age – as his body uncurls stiffly, as large, capable feet find worn flooring. It lights his pale legs. It outlines his waist, tapered as it was when he was a teenager. It turns the already pale skin along his chest blinding; it makes his dark hair shine. It turns his hands into things he does not recognize. It pulls the page back on his parameters; the hardwood worn from pacing, the frenzy of paper on his table denoting deadlines, the prints on his window from where he has pressed his hot forehead against the glass. Also, the one rumpled pillow, the one pair of shoes by the door, the one tooth brush in the metal cup.

In this particular flat, on this particular street, he is far from newspaper row. As he crosses to the wash stand wearing his undershirt and little else he is not prepared to admit this as a persuasive reason for choosing this particular flat for his twenty third birthday.

"And so far away from your poor mother," Esther had fretted, her bony hands reminiscent of sparrows as she cleared the table, wiping it of crumbs. "Bubbala, your father will worry himself half to death, and you want to bring that on this family?"

"I'll be fine, Esther," David's father's voice from the other room.

"You see? Look how he lies for you," she shook her head, fluttered her hands, dirty and brown. He and Sarah caught eyes, and he had to work his mouth to hide a smile. Now, in the privacy of his glowing flat, David plunges his hands wrist-deep into yesterday's water. Outside, the vendors are beginning to holler. He washes the last of his restless, moving dreams away, strong hands moving deftly, drenching his face, his lips, his hair. He can feel the water pouring from his skin, can taste it when he opens his mouth – dusty, warm, like an August afternoon. His towel clean-smelling, rough. As New York City wakes up, David Jacobs gets ready for work.

"Newspaper man through and through," his father's proud smile, the feeling of his warm, broad palm thumping down hard on David's right shoulder blade, like a second heart beat. His mother, pursing her lips and putting up a façade of brusqueness to hide wet eyes. "Well," was the only thing she said when she found out about the promotion. "Well. Well." And Sarah, smiling like the Mona Lisa, hair half pinned.

"How does it feel to be on the other side of the desk?" She had asked in her way, the way of questions going nowhere. David checks his pocket watch, lying supine on his bedside table, and picks up his one good suit from its sleepy place on the ironing board.

"Ahh," he remembers saying. "Great," a laugh. "It feels great."

It feels great. The flat is not large, but David has never required much space, moving restlessly in his mind while his body stays clipped. He puts on his suit with little flourish, eyes focused on thin air, lips closed. He drowns in light now, it is relentless, flooding the little room, creeping up the solid stalk of his throat – somewhere in the back of his mind, perhaps buried in a dream, he recalls Sarah saying something about sunlight, it's bigness. Something she'd picked up somewhere. He glances at the papers he has left on the table and the new sun is making them glow. On one sheaf, a report on rising crime rates on the subway, now in operation for two years. On another, the socialistic angle of the automobile, with an exclusive interview with Princeton University president Woodrow Wilson. More yet, an overview of the unveiling of the memorial fountain dedicated to the General Slocum disaster, a report on the brutalizing of a policeman in the Tenderloin district, a note on political turmoil in Europe. And his newest piece, front and center in the pile, the piece that had kept him up late into the night – a blazing editorial on backlash against the ill reception of Eastern European immigrants and the overcrowding of Ellis Island.

"Don't you go causing trouble, _bubbala_," – his mother's voice again, from years ago.

"Causing trouble," his father, jovial, fiercely proud. "You bet he's going to be causing trouble. You're a newspaper man now, David, you go out there and cause just as much trouble as you want."

"Mayer!" A dishrag, whipping. "You don't listen to your father; no son of mine is going to turn into a penny-chasing, muck-raking…sensationalist! You think you're so smart? Think you're going to write books on the meat and the oil like that no good _gonif_ from Baltimore? Oh don't make that face at me, David, I read the papers…" David smiles and handles his latest article, admiring the firm, insistent march of letters, the occasional note added in ink along the margins, his name blazing across the top. And then another voice, unwelcome this time. "Remember, the first line is the most important in any article." Dimmed light, a different flat, the insistent press of knees. "Your first line should tell the reader all they need to know. It is the bones, and every line after…" A pen, stroking the paper, a quick, firm line. "Enlarges upon those bones."

David shakes his head – no need to remember these things. As the light angles in through his flat window, David Jacobs sorts the papers into a satchel, handling the latest with particular care, grabs a slice of dry bread off the counter, palms his hat up onto his head and leaves, his apartment glowing in his wake.

-

_"I'm going to go find him."_

_David is staring up at the ceiling. The night is humid, just as the night before, his underarms are wet , staining his undershirt a darker gray. Across the room, the shape on the other mattress shifts. Sarah sniffs sleepily, rolls over._

_"Who?"_

_"You know who."_

_David's fingers are braided behind his head, and the pull of the arms expands his chest, narrows his waist. Sarah's eyes are red in the darkness._

_"David," she says slowly, firmly, "go to sleep."_

_"I want to. I'm going to," David says._

_"Momma needs you," Sarah says. David breathes out hard through his nose. "David, why?"_

_A pause. David shifts just slightly, feeling the stiffness in his upper arms from running the printing press that morning. Sarah waits._

_"You don't know," she says finally, her voice cracking. "Go to sleep, Davey."_

_David does know, and cannot articulate. He makes believe, for the sake of his sister's dignity, that he does not hear as she rolls over and buries her face in her pillow, pretending not to cry for reasons that she will not explain to him. As she bites into the sour linen, he breathes slowly, the basket of his ribs expanding, contracting, expanding._

-

Newspaper row is blinding. Already the district is fluid with movement; David is jostled by men in suits, knocked into by children, skirted by women in flashes of hair and impossible ribbon. Accustomed to being in the company of giants, he nimbly crosses Spruce street, sparing only the briefest of glances to the buildings that dwarf him – _Staats-Zeitung_, Potter, Harold. A car sputters past him, he catches a whiff of fuel, rubber, perfume. Before him stands the Park Row building, improbable in height, near monolithic, jutting up from the sidewalk with stiff shoulders.

"On a Sunday?" His mother's frown, a severe notation.

"There's a Sunday edition, ma," David had said, awkward in a flat that was no longer his own. "I gotta come in. I'll be here for dinner, I'll just be…late."

"Hrm," she had said. "Who do they think they are that they can't take a day off like the rest of us?"

"I don't know, ma."

Down the road he knows, but does not turn to see, the great brass dome of The World, the awkward square of the distribution offices, the moving clusters of boys with dirty faces and arms full of newsprint. The headlines are already being hawked; rough, obnoxious bird calls. He turns his face away from them, cutting towards the Park Row building, one hand on the flap of his satchel. Tactically, he does not reminisce. Only one summer, really, he thinks every time, years ago.

"It's important," he had said to her, warming, thinking of that article still unfinished. "Mr. Walters is one of the most accredited editors that I work under, if he gives me this story on the election, I may even get to work under Whitelaw Reid himself!"

"Oh really," she had replied, hands on hips. "And if you were to work under Whitelaw Reid himself, would he give you even just one Sunday night off to come see your poor mother? Who works her fingers to the bone to make a nice dinner for you, Mr. Big Shot Reporter?"

"No, but he'll pay me more," David mutters to himself now as he crosses the wide, warm sidewalk. Though he looks well enough to pass, the lining of his jacket is torn, the hems of his pants beginning to fray. "Ever thought about that, ma? Maybe you wouldn't have to work so hard. Maybe not your fingers, all the way to the bone." He cuts towards Park Row, and is reminded once again of the strange feeling he gets upon seeing his co-workers, fat with cash, dressed well, shoed expensively. He cannot prove he is not getting paid well enough for the work he does, but he feels it. He won't admit this to his mother, though, not even arguing with her memory. He knows precisely what she'd say. As he moves towards his building, thoughts running sour on this, he is stopped by an agile seventeen year old, greasy hair, skin the color of sunlight.

"This just in, mister," he says, and David's heart gives an irregular bump at the guttural accent. He takes in the stranger, the wide, warm planes of his face, the green bandana knotted around his throat in lieu of an ascot, the slender, agile legs. "British launch the Dreadnought in open waters today." David tries to sidestep him. "S'capable of reaching death defying speeds," the boy continues, walking backwards, long legs scissoring, tracking him like a lion would track prey. "Carries twenny inch guns! It's virtually unbeatable! What does it mean for America? Buy a pape, mister?" His rough charm, his narrow hands, all achingly familiar.

"No thanks," David manages with a smile. The boy jack-knifes back, already moving on, eyes seeking out the next customer with the skill of a consummate professional. David pauses, tonguing the inside of his cheek, before turning and saying suddenly "I wrote it, you know."

The boy turns, hazel eyes darkly picking at David's face, seeing him truly for the first time and mining for sustenance.

"So?" He says finally. " 'm'I in trouble?"

David lets out a brief laugh, but the boy is not smiling.

"No," David says finally. "Um…twelve inch guns."

"S'cuse me?"

"Twelve inch. Not twenty."

The boy considers him, face impassive. "Lissen, mister, I gotta eat tonight."

"Fine," David says, shrugging. "Sure."

He turns away and jogs up the steps to the Park Row building. The boy with the papers moves on.

-

David's office is cramped, closet-sized, fuzzy with heat. He wipes away the sweat with the heel of his hand, and then flips open his satchel, light with nerves.

"So this story's the big one?" Sarah's voice again as he thumbs through the papers, pressed like dried flowers.

"No," David had replied, hunched perpetually, pen picking out the weak words as a bird might peck at a gutter. "This is my ticket to the big one." She had been visiting that evening, a beautiful evening; suffused in late sunlight, she appeared like a nun in his doorway with stale bread and coffee beans. "Walters just needs to know I'm capable, so this…" he shifts the paper slightly, "is my Ellis story, which I think will be huge once it hits the streets. And then…" he frowns at the paper, as though arguing. "Hopefully. You know."

"Oh," her accomplished hands, tipping the coffee beans into the ancient grinder. "What's the big one then?"

"Uhh…" David's pen, a knife, slashing. "Gubernatorial election coming up. The Tribune is finally in a place," a pause, his nib scratching, "to actually cause some damage. I think if I can get in even just a few words about Hearst and the corruption in Tammany, it might just sway a few voters…"

"You think you're going to get the story?" She had asked practically, already grinding the beans into a crumbly powder; she was unable to be idle, a trait, he suspected, that came directly from their mother. He straightens now, holding the finished product in his hand, feeling strangely light headed.

"I think I am," he had told her. David smiles faintly, turns, and walks out of his office.

-

_Sarah woke to the sound of slamming footsteps against the fire escape. _

_She sat up, pulling the sheet up to her neck, pale as bone in the winter moonlight. Restless, eyes still wet with dreams, it took a moment for her to realize where she was – the room pulled her down, back to her bed, water swirling through a drain. Her eyes focused on the calendar that her father had tacked up next to the window – November, 1903._

_"Hello?" She whispered, before realizing the window was shut against the cold._

_The footsteps slowed, and she caught a glimpse of a shoulder through the lace curtain, the curve of a cheek and stiff corduroy. David – he was supposed to be back hours ago. She breathed out hard through her nose and pushed the blankets away, swinging her legs over the side of her narrow bed, not even wincing at the icy floor. Mama had been so worried, Papa had chewed his bread noisily, watching the door, went to bed without even saying good night. Where had he been?_

_She turned to go wake her parents, but something about the resolute angle of his jaw, something about the slope of his leg as he sat down, drawing his thighs up tight to his chest and resting his chin on his knees slowed her feet. She watched him for a moment, focused like a needle. Her little brother had passed the age where he trumpeted his feelings loudly, but she still knew a thing or two._

_And so she moved towards the window instead, reaching out for the sill, mouth half open, his name already forming on her tongue. He would speak with her, he couldn't keep a thing from her, and momma, would get the sanitized version in the morning, she would keep her brother's secrets. Her fingers hit the pane noiselessly, skin dry and silent, and just then he turned to see her. His blue eyes, so unlike anyone else's in the family, caught on her sparrow brown ones and held. At that moment, she could not move. Not even to say his name._

-

Gregory Walter's office was impressive in the way that David's never would be. David, dwarfed by high ceilings, by fat carpets, crosses the floor to where Walters is sitting, resolute and impressive. The sun slants in, heating the mahogany, illuminating the dustless air.

"Ah, Jacobs," Walters says, bestowing him with the briefest of looks. "Sit down, sit down."

David pulls the chair out from the other side of the wide desk, and does as he is told. Walters is writing something; broad, bloated hands busy, face turned down. Even when not backlit, he cuts an imposing figure; rich and round, with piercing blue eyes, and thick gray beard ornamenting a strong, American jaw. David discreetly wipes his hands against his knees, sweat heating his underarms and chest, watching as Walters writes his name and underlines it, imposing, authoritative. He thinks of his mother, what she would say in this situation, what she would really be thinking. He bites back a grin.

"Now," Walters says, replacing his pen in its well and looking up. His handsome mouth curls upwards in a small, polite smile. "We have a lot to talk about today, don't we Mr. Jacobs?"

"Yes sir," David says automatically, stomach clenching slightly. "I believe you wanted to see me personally about the Ellis Island story." He places the article face up on the desk and slides it forwards, noting the smoothness of the wood through paper. Walters braids his fingers together and rests his hands on the desk, still smiling, unmoving. David waits a moment for him to take the paper, and the stillness feels like a stone.

"Um…" he manages finally, clearing his throat. "I actually meant to talk to you about the gubernatorial election, sir…"

"I know you did," Walters cuts him off, the smile promptly vanishing. "Jacobs, I feel like I should cut to the chase with you here. I gave the story to Matthews. He was just in this morning to ask about it."

David feels as though his hands have been plunged into cold water. He clears his throat again, but his mouth is dry. He knows Matthews.

"Oh," he finally says. Walters is still watching him, not unkindly, but closely. "Well, that was all I really wanted to…ah, inquire about, sir, so unless there are further issues you want to…"

"As a matter of fact…" Walters says, and David swallows his words. Not the election, but perhaps another story, he thinks as Walters pushes aside the memo he had been writing and brings up a stack of papers from out his desk. The slide and quiet, rich sounding click of the drawer makes him nervous. "I have a piece for you, David. It's…a little different than what you're used to, if I may say so, but I think you can handle it."

David sits up straighter, pulse drumming in his wrists. Walters extracts a sheet from the pile and passes it across the desk; David realizes, as he takes it, that his own article still lies unread. He looks down at the proposal.

"Piece for the society section," Walters says magnanimously, his smile back in place, as though fixed. "The Van Pyke oil well out west is celebrating its third year running. I have the train tickets, you'll be on the spot. I'd like the article finished by the end of the month. Just a little something."

David reads, feeling his heart drown. Another fluff piece. Words boil in his throat, so he clears it again, nods, and places the paper neatly on his lap. He looks up, but Walters is already occupied, writing out another memo, hands steady and certain.

David pushes back his chair and stands, turns to leave, but his feet are stones. After a moment, awkwardly twisted, he sits back down. Walters looks up, and his eyes make David's stomach feel cold.

"Sir, I…" his hands, dead white birds on the desk top. "May I speak frankly?

Walters nods once, eyeing David not unkindly, one hand moving up to caress the flesh ballooning between his chin and collar. David's mouth is cotton.

"I…" he swallows, licks his lips. "I'm one of the best reporters you have." Walters' eyes are blue, placid. "And I'm not boasting, sir, that's a fact. You've had me on pieces like this all year, and it's only through my own efforts that I've been able to write on issues of substance! I'm…sir, I'm better than Matthews, I know it. The awards I've been recommended for alone, my track record, my…my extensive experience within my field, my letters of approval from…from…" but here his tongue stops. While he tries to gather his wits, will himself to stop stalling, Walters speaks.

"Bryan Denton's recommendation persuaded me to give you this position against my…original instincts," he says. David can tell he is choosing his words carefully, can tell by the weight with which they fall. "To be perfectly honest with you, Jacobs, were it up to me entirely you would not be working at the level you are at currently. Now, this has nothing to do with your, I admit, sterling skills as a reporter. Do you understand?"

David's body is beginning to understand. His hands are clenched; the blood is beating hard in all the narrow parts of him.

"No sir."

Walters consider him again, before shuffling through a stack of papers placed in front of him. David drops his eyes automatically, follows those hands, catches a photo of someone he decides not to recognize.

"When you were seventeen you were arrested as a ringleader of a rally that was deemed to have disturbed the peace, been dangerous to the general welfare of civilians, not to mention officers of the law themselves, and was socialistic in origin…"

"Charges were dropped," David's words are knives. Walters continues.

"At eighteen, you were appointed to the post of vice president of your high school's labour rights and solidarity committee, disbanded the same year."

"It wasn't an illegal group until…"

"At nineteen, both you, your father, and your sister were arrested in connection with the sympathy riots for coal strikers in the Utah…"

"Sir," David's mouth is cotton, "did you read anything about…"

"And frankly, your track record at the Tribune has displayed astonishing tendencies towards those socialists making noise over in Russia." Walters' eyes are frost when caught by the light. "This, coupled with your…family background, we feel is sending our readers the wrong message. And we don't want to send our readers the wrong message, Jacobs. I'm sorry, but it's been deemed necessary for your position here to change. I'm sure you understand."

David's words are gone. There is no bending in light of that wily, crystal blue.

"My position?" He manages.

"I think articles of this persuasion are what you do best here, Jacobs. From now on."

David ignores the wound. There is something else. "And…my family background? Sir?" Walters does not drop his gaze, but his lips rumple, closing like a purse. "What do you mean by that?"

Outside the noise is mounting, growing like the light, he can still hear the newsboys calls over the clip of horses, the newer, stranger growl of engines. Walters finally does drop his eyes, extracts a lone sheaf from within the stack he has in front of him. David knows he is not reading.

"Jacobs is a Jewish name, isn't it?"

David's hands twitch, dying creatures.

"German," he manages.

"Yes, well," the papers settle, falling neatly into stacks. Walter's smile is a glittering shard. "I'm sure you understand."

-

David's feet move without him. Like his hands, they are unfamiliar. He descends the steps of the Tribune building, mechanical, like a bicycle, listening to the noise of his breathing in his ears. Tonight he will wash, re-iron his collar, wear his fresh undershirt and give up a nickel so the black boy on the corner will shine his shoes. He will present himself, a newspaper man, rich and gleaming to a family that would love him anyways – he does not want them to know. He will tell them where he is going; an assignment, out of town, a free ticket. Out west! Les will be excited, tall and gangly now, forehead maybe clipped from when some boys were throwing stones earlier. His mother will fret, his father will shine.

Sarah will know, he thinks to himself, clenching the proposal in his fist. She'll know right away.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"_Terrible."_

_David sighed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes._

_"I know you're a better writer than this," Bryan said, moving to the window and jamming it open; upwards with both hands, hands that David couldn't remember not being ink stained. He didn't look up, but could hear the way the older man struck a match, pressed it to the tip of his cigarette, could even hear the quiet, wet sound of paper on flesh. He removed his hands, blinked away the clouds, and stared at the draft before him._

"_Concentrate," Bryan said, kinder. Smoke curled out the window in plumes. "Revise it."_

-

"Out west!"

His mother reacts as he imagines she would, so he is able to keep a straight face as the fork drops dramatically from her fingers and clangs against the delicate desert plate – the fine china: Sundays have taken on the veneer of a special occasion as he absent otherwise.

He chews carefully, swallows, before replying: "Yeah, Ma. Out west."

Esther's mouth works as she balls up her serviette in one hand, ready to begin the diatribe, but Mayer cuts in, inclining his head.

"Are they expecting you to pay for this, David?"

"No, poppa," David says quickly, sawing into the chicken his mother has prepared, feeling as though the knife is scraping against his own bones. "The tickets are paid for, and they've reserved a room at the finest hotel in town."

"In _town,_" his mother bursts through, rolling her eyes uproariously. "Oh, in _town_ he says. And what town is this, David? Some backwater dump? It's not safe, _bubbala_, your things will be stolen the moment you step off the train."

"Out west like in Zane Grey?" Les asks, looking quickly up at David.

"Yeah, like in Zane…" David looks up. "Wait, you're reading Zane Gray?"

"Is this really up to your skill level, David?" Mayer asks, the lines between his eyebrows deepening as he scans the proposal that David has passed to him. "The piece you were working on last week about Ellis island seems more…"

"You're letting him read Gray?" David asks, turning to his mother. "He's just a kid."

"I'm fifteen!" Les sneers.

"You're fourteen, eat your peas," his mother chides, throwing her serviette down on the table where it wilts. "And as for you, you may be a fancy world-traveling journalist, but you're still my David and you know better than to tell your mother how to raise her own children."

"What's the angle on this one, anyways?" Mayer asks.

"Have _you_ ever read Zane Grey?"

"David! Your father is asking you a question, you don't be disrespectful."

"Uh…" David winces as Les scrapes his fork hard against the plate. "No angle, Pa, just a vacation, I guess. Ma, when _I _was fourteen…"

"Oh, for the love of God, you know as well as I do that I wouldn't have been able to stop you reading a thing when you were fourteen and what makes you think you're so different from your baby brother?"

"I'm not a baby," Les says viciously, mouth full of peas.

"Yeah, you are," David says absently. "When _I_ was fourteen I wouldn't even want me reading those books. They're full of all the wrong ideas about…about…"

"They're not, they're good!" Les protests.

"Lester! You chew your food. And you," Esther reaches over and smacks David on the arm. "You wait till you have children of your own, then you come talk to me about how to raise a young boy." David frowns, fills his mouth with food. "Of course, what am I talking about children of your own when you haven't even brought a nice girl home for dinner? Are you hiding her, David? Why don't you want to bring anyone to meet your poor mother? Who's going to take care of me when I get old if not my grandchildren _who,_" a dirty look, directed at both David and Sarah, "it seems as though I am never to have?"

"I don't know, David," Mayer says finally, rubbing the back of his neck, looking at the proposal like it's a puzzle. David's chewing slows as he catches the awkward angle of his father's arm, sees the slight crook in the limb where the bone did not properly set. He swallows slowly, feeling like the food in his throat is too dry, too close. "Isn't it time they put you on some of the bigger stories? You've been working for Walters a long time now."

David drinks from his glass, drowns his tongue with water, and does not look over at Sarah, who has been sitting quietly the whole time, chewing, listening to every word that is being said.

-

"_Don't' tell Dad," he said to his mother when she opened the door. His legs were sore from running, his eyes red, watery. And Esther, flaring inside like a fire, did not. She took his hand, pulled him inside, and led him right to the hard bench in the corner of the room. He was Les's age and they had been throwing stones._

"_Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad," David's mother whispered into his hair, darker at that age, the color of ink out the well. He remembered very clearly her arms, her hands, one crossing before his frail body to grab his shoulder and pull him close, the other pressing against the side of his head, firm, clasping him to her shoulder, her palms sticky with blood. Fifteen, tall and awkward still, he curled into her like a child, and she moved him._

"_Barukh sheim k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed," His blood was warm, like the coffee he was just beginning to drink. It drenched his eyebrow, his cheek, the right side of his mouth. He touched it with resentful fingertips, and every time they came back shining. "V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha b'khol l'vav'kha uv'khol naf'sh'kha uv'khol m'odekha__." _

_He was too old to be rocked as a baby might be, and he knew that's why she was whispering, so his father would not come to see why she was reciting the Shema without him. She had hidden it from his father too when Sarah came back crying a year later, her blouse torn and dirt rubbed hard in her face, which was pretty even at that age. Her tears left pale porcelain tracks, crooked like handwriting._

"_V'hayu had'varim ha'eileh asher," he murmured along with his mother, once his tears stopped choking him, filling his throat. "anokhi m'tzav'kha hayom al l'vavekha." Her strokes on his arm were long and hard, as though she was drawing water. The rock that had clipped him was clenched in his fist, he could feel it's hard edges, it's gritty, warm planes. Dirty Jew – that's what they had been screaming. That, too, was clenched in his fist. __Hear, Israel,_ _the Lord is our God, the Lord is One._

_Later, when he went to go wash for Sabbath, he saw the way the blood flowered and bloomed down the side of him. He ran the water, warm and clean, but could only stare for a moment in the cheap tin mirror, at how much of it there was, and how red, like a balloon, like a red, red firecracker._

_-_

Sarah finally speaks to him when she is washing up after dinner, wrist deep in clean white suds, long, curling locks escaping the knot at the back of her head. Esther has settled onto a hard bench in the corner, Les's torn socks already in her aging, capable hands ("Look at this, what is he possibly doing to go through so many socks a week?"); Mayer is reading, gently ignoring his wife, squinting at the thin, intelligent looking text. David, at home and foreign all at once, leans awkwardly against the counter, feeling the hard push of tile against his hips.

"So what about the gubernatorial election?" She asks, voice smooth and quiet over the slosh of water. David watches as she stacks the clean plates on the counter, as the graying water slides along the rims, trickles down into dirty puddles.

"What about it?" he replies. She looks up at him with that sharp look, and away again.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

He watches his mother who is running her fingers along the tears in Les' socks, mouth pursed, knuckles knobby. He notes, all of a sudden, how gray her hair seems in the dim light, how deep the wrinkles around her lips are becoming as she tracks her youngest son's footsteps through the number of holes in the fabric.

"Did he say why?" Sarah's voice. David's mouth is a knot.

"No," he says, although he knows he is being read like a book. He does not look at his older sister as she carefully rinses off another dish, gently, capably. His mother accidentally snaps the thread too short; her sigh is centuries of weary frustration, centuries of mothers.

"Are you going to take this one?"

"Of course," David says, brow wrinkling.

"You get to go west." A smile. "Like in Zane Grey."

"Yeah. Best hotel in town."

"What town?"

"Uh," David looks over at the proposal on the table as though he has forgotten. "Santa Fe."

There is a clang as Sarah drops a plate against the hard edge of the wash bin; in the silence it rings like a bell, like an alarm. Esther jumps, snapping the thread again; Sarah looks up guiltily as it slides alone back into the suds.

"Sarah!" She scolds. "You want to give your poor father a heart attack?"

"I'm fine, Esther," Mayer says, not raising his eyes from his book.

"Sorry, Ma," Sarah says gently, straightening the plates and turning her eyes away from David, focusing on the water. But the suds are turning gray, she can no longer see to her hands. David looks at his sister, her pale thin arms, her ballerina's neck; in the dim light of the flat she could be a painting, but instead she stands hunched, eyes averted, arms cut cleanly at the wrists.

-

David will stay at the family house tonight, because Esther doesn't want him walking home alone so late in the evening.

"I'll be fine, Ma, nothing happens in this part of town anyways. I'll take a cab, Ma," he protests, thinking almost longingly of his cramped, cool flat. Esther rolls her eyes.

"So. My son is a rich man now. Takes a _cab_ everywhere he goes. You'll spend one night with your family, young man, it won't kill you, and it's only right if you're going to be leaving New York for some…_disease _ridden town out west."

Sarah's smile is hiding somewhere behind her lips, but David knows her heart is not in it. Esther is already making up the old cot for Les that he used to sleep on as a child.

"You take your old bed, it'll be nice having you in the house again," she is saying, a small, perfunctory smile on her lips. "Sarah! Go make up your brother's bed, Lester's probably left it a complete mess. _Buballa, _take off your coat, you can hang it on the rack there so it doesn't get wrinkled…"

David looks over at his father, who is smiling kindly. Sighing, he shrugs off his coat and hangs it up, as his mother has told him to do.

"Good night, David," his father says, going back to his book.

"Tomorrow you can walk your father to work," Esther says to her eldest son's retreating back as she snaps the sheet. "Then you go back and pack your things."

"Yes, Ma."

"David! You listen to what I'm saying."

"Yes, Ma."

"_Buballa,_ you give your mother a kiss."

-

Sarah has not made the bed. When David walks into the room, as familiar as a phrase, he sees the dirty swirl of sheets at the foot of it, the beaten pillow hanging off the side, a thin novel with a graphic cover split open and face down on the mattress.

Snorting, he picks it up. _Riders of the Purple Sage._ Zane Grey. "Manifest destiny, blah blah blah," he mutters to himself as he flips contemptuously through the thin pages. "Blah blah blah, America, blah blah blah, opportunity, blah blah blah nativist, xenophobe, racist bullshit." The book falls to his feet. He hears something. Looking up, he sees his sister on the fire escape.

It is August and it is not dark the way winters are. Even at the late hour her sparrow-brown hair seems to be gleaming with sunlight, but perhaps that is just her. His sister, as they are all aware, is radiant, although according to Esther it is a radiance that is waning at the age of twenty six. He sighs and moves towards the window, which she has left open – a signal from when they were kids. She does not turn around to look at him as he clambers out, awkwardly as he always has. She does not even look when he leans against the railing next to her, crossing one foot behind him, looking across the way to the brick wall that has always blocked their view. Together, they are silent, as though waiting.

"When do you catch your train?" She asks finally, and her voice is soft.

"Um…" David looks down at the alley below them. "Tomorrow afternoon."

"Hmm," she breathes through her nose. "So soon."

"Yeah. Well, gotta be there for the day." His voice takes on a bite. "The big, important day." She turns her face to him then, and he can see the way her eyes are red in the corners. "The gala celebration of the year. The news event of the _century._ The anniversary so important they have to send a tenured reporter of _four years_ to go cover it."

"David," she sniffs loudly, and his stomach grips, tightens like a fist. "You're…you're coming back aren't you?"

David's fingers tense around the railing; inexplicably, he's angry. He's furious.

"Of course I'm coming back, Sarah," he says. He wants to push her like he might have when he was younger. "Of _course _I'm coming back. I mean, why would I? Why the hell wouldn't I come back, Sarah? I mean, why the _hell_ would you think that I would not come back?!"

"It's just a question, don't raise your voice," she says quietly, he can hear the hitches in her breath. He realizes he has been raising his voice, he's been shouting. It echoes down the alley. It rings in his ears. Grinding his teeth he grips the railing and leans back, his body a tense, straight line in the twilight.

"Don't be angry," Sarah whispers.

"I'm not angry," David snaps, feeling ridiculous, feeling charred. He holds himself this way, tense, and they both fall silent, listening to the sounds of the city. Horses hooves in the distance, the singing of the young girl in the flat across the way, the sudden, ripping sound of an engine down the block. Inside, they can hear Les howling at the indignity of having to sleep in his childhood bed.

"I don't fit there anymore, Ma!" He is saying. "I'm not a baby."

Sarah's shoulders swell and he thinks maybe she is crying, but she turns her face to his, a quarter moon, and he can see her smile. Catching his eye, she giggles again, laughs until he is laughing, laughs until she has to cover her mouth with her fingertips and bite her lip so Esther won't hear.

"Sorry," she says, grinning. "I was just thinking. Remember when we were kids and couldn't leave the flat without momma?"

"Yeah," David says, pulling his lean body up against the railing again.

"Whenever we went out with her it was to the park," Sarah continued, as though telling a story. "You know, the one that used to be down the block? And we would come out here and look at this building," her hand waves at the wall. "And wonder what was on the other side of it. We never knew."

"I remember," David grins, listening to Les yelling, Esther yelling back louder.

"You were dead certain it was a circus," her laugh overtakes her words.

"It makes more sense than a castle with a handsome prince," David shoots back.

"And then…then there was that one night that we snuck out. Just to see. And I was so scared, because I thought Mama would find us and make us leave forever. But you convinced me, so we snuck out to see what was on the other side…"

David's face aches from smiling. He remembers exactly the night.

"There was nothing. Just more buildings like the ones before it."

"Just more buildings like the ones before it," he repeats, shaking his head. "We got a whipping that night."

"Ohh," Sarah groans, and David starts to laugh again. "David, I was so mad at you. I thought it was all your fault."

"It was all my fault," David says, nodding. "Definitely all my fault."

"You were too curious for your own good. A reporter in the making," she teases, leaning over and nudging him gently with her shoulder. They sober then, as the moon appears, white as bone. Les has stopped yelling, and they can hear their father's voice, quiet and low, very stern. In the distance a train blows it's whistle, and it seems all of a sudden as though they are more than just two people on a fire escape.

"I hated that wall," David says lightly, raising his eyebrows. "I hated not being able to see past it. I wanted to so badly."

"No," Sarah says, tilting her head to one side. "It's nice, you know." Her sigh is like her mothers. "It's like the Waldorph out here."

David snorts. "I guess."

Sarah smiles, eyes gleaming. David decides that his sister's tears are from the laughter, and doesn't say another word.

-

"_Better," Bryan said, shifting his eyes up to David, smile growing on his face like a stalk. "Much, much better."_

_David laughs shortly, stretching his arms out in front of him and slouching down in his hard, kitchen chair. His right hand is bitten and red, blistered from where he has held the pen for so long. Bryan claps a palm down on his shoulder as he pushes himself to his feet. His fingers are dark with ink, the nails yellow from smoking; a habit he picked up in the Philippines. "You'll be a reporter yet!"_

"_I think I'm ready _now,_" David says, half joking as Bryan lopes across the room to the cabinet, which he knows by now is stocked with liquor. "Take me down to the Journal with you tomorrow, I'll show 'em."_

"_Don't get too big for your britches," Bryan says as he pulls a Scotch from the cabinet's depths and takes two tumblers from the top. "That article is good, but it's not that good."_

"_What do you mean?" David asks, thick with pride as he takes up the paper and twists in his chair to see his mentor pour two healthy drinks, to see him cross to the icebox. "What do you mean not _that_ good? This is brilliant! It's quality stuff, Bryan!"_

"_Okay," Bryan grins, chipping some ice off into the tumblers. "It's brilliant, then. Quality stuff. I'm sure they'll be blown away by a boy who reads Jules Verne and still lives with his mother."_

"_I'm not a boy," David scowls, turning and slouching hard into the chair. "I turned twenty yesterday. I _told_ you that."_

"_That you did," Bryan agreed, raising his eyebrows. "At least three times today, I think."_

"_Well, it's true," David threw over his shoulder. Bryan grinned to himself before closing the icebox door and crossing over to the table, plunking one glass down in front of his protégé. He sat, and David looked up at him, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, collar unbuttoned, the sardonic smile cracked open on his face. Bryan Denton raised his glass._

"_Happy birthday, David."_

_David couldn't help from smiling. He took his own glass and clinked the lip of it against his mentor's._

"_Thanks, Bryan."_

_As Bryan took a sip, throwing it back without a second thought, David watched the sarcastic line of his jaw, the way his throat was exposed when his head was tilted back like that and his eyes were closed. He looked away. _

* * *

Flowers for betas Ankeel, PolyesterRage, and Falco


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

_David keeps his eyes closed._

_"I don't know either," the voice says. The hands against his chest are warm, and very close. David licks his lips and tastes a number of things. _

_"Just get out here, alright?"_

_The hands push and he thinks the word _coax,_ he thinks the word _probe_. He feels as though he hanging by a rope. The rope runs through his guts. The rope runs through his guts to the ground. David does not open his eyes._

_"Go."_

_In his body is a wave and it is breaking. _

_"Go!"_

David wakes up. He is shuttling across the country.

The sound that comes out his throat is foreign, and for a moment in the darkness he does not recognize it as his own. His hands are ghosts in the black, his breath close and hot. His ears ache with machinery. He can hear everything - the discipline of gears, the growl of coal fuming, the union of steel and steel. And then, familiarized, everything fades. Lying still, sweating in the darkness of his sleeping compartment, David remembers where he is.

_Through to San Francisco in less than four days, _the fat poster letters had said when David and his father arrived at the station. _Luxurious cars and eating houses on the Union Pacific_.

"Four days," his father had shaken his head, the corners of his mouth tightening at the pain in his arm. "You look at that, David. The world is getting smaller all the time."

_It is, _David thinks. He is sweating, stripped down to his long johns and still suffused in heat. Restless, he kicks himself onto his side, feeling the slide of ghost palms along his chest. He shakes them off. _Not now._

"I want you to take advantage of this now," his father had told him, resolutely carrying his suitcase. "I never got to travel when I was your age. Never got the opportunity. You carry on like this and you're going to see the world!" David had obliged him the forced joviality. They both knew.

He presses the heels of his damp hands against his eyes. He doesn't like the finality of this compartment, the drawn curtains, the low ceilings. It is like being underwater, he chokes on it. He has been dreaming again, and cannot remember of what. His hands, independent creatures, track the corners of his mind, rest against his face, his chest. He discovers, with acute embarrassment, that he is hard.

"God dammit," he breathes, rolling onto his front. "God, god, _god_ dammit."

"Listen, son," his father again, his face in the back of his mind, the long, stern nose, the intellectual lips. The train was leaving. David had one foot on the step. His father's hands, broad and familiar, clasped tightly on his shoulders. "Your mother and I are very proud of you."

David swears again. His body sways like he is on a tight hinge. The sweat on his lips is salty, bitter to the taste.

-

The mornings are different here. They do not glow.

Light is meted out according, David suspects, to the price of compartments. Though, again, he has no way of proving this; was he not promised the best? The sun forces its way in through the small, oily windows, shedding its actuality on the meagerness of his suitcase, toiletries, the smallness of him. The one pillow on the bed, the one pair of shoes by the sliding door, the one tooth brush in the cup. By the third morning traveling he has resigned himself to it.

"You'd think you were a rhododendron," his mother would say to herself wonderingly upon walking into their bedroom, early mornings, to find him already out on the fire escape, face turned upwards. "I should water you as well, maybe. Would you like that, David?"

It is more difficult to shave. He notes this on this same third morning, cutting himself for the fifth time this trip. "Shit," he swears, and the word is sticky and satisfactory in his mouth. He scoops up water in clammy palms. "Son of a _bitch_."

"What happened to _you_?" Sarah's voice, colored with laughter. "You get in a fight?"

"Shut _up,_"

"Did you use Poppa's _razor_?"

"_Sarah_!"

There is time now, so much of it, riding in his compartment with him, tugging at his ear like a child. He is not used to this sort of leisure and comes to awkward terms with it, passing the time with his forehead pressed to the window, blue eyes fastened somewhere past the horizon. The countryside serves as distraction; he finds himself grudgingly impressed with the sights. Used to the squat, crooked teeth buildings of New York, the wide-ranging fields and lone silo sentinels captivate him. He spends hours watching Ohio and Idaho fly by; feels something stirring deep in his stomach at the strange, dry cliffs of Montana; has the shrill and giddy pleasure of watching storm clouds gather at the root of the horizon in Nebraska. And fleetingly, in between the occasional head of cattle, the clearest blue sky, or a dash of wildflowers streaking like paint across the window, he sees something. Hard to say what; perhaps the hint of light growing bigger, expanding, washing across the plains in a warm, golden mist.

-

In the daytimes he preoccupies himself with his notes, the sparse facts he had taken the time to record from the New York Library and the few photos he had pillaged from the Tribune's records. There is only so much to be done with them, however, and he usually lapses into the old lines of his thoughts – his family, his apartment; the slim, sweet regularities that he always took for granted. David has never liked the furtive shift of change. He has his coffee refilled time and time again by the pretty girl with the slim, white hands, and never has the courage to say a word.

"The Rosens' boy down the street just got married," his mother says. "Lovely girl, her father's an Irishman, but the mother is respectable enough." And she rounds on him, scolding by turns: "You know what you're doing to your mother, David? You know how Mrs. Rosen asks after you? And what do I have to tell them after twenty three years?"

Sarah generally managed to escape their mother's tirades the way she did everything – smiling sweetly, slipping sideways on ballerina feet, calmly removing herself like a shadow vanishing. David, more solid, clumsier, could never do such a thing.

"I don't know, ma," he mutters to himself now, examining a print of the Van Pyke well. The proud faces, the tender moustaches, the serious set of the lips. "Maybe I haven't met the right girl yet. Maybe I want…" but this he could never articulate. Something like what his parents had, something that ran deep and could not be distinguished. Something different at the same time.

"Coffee, sir?" The girl asks. David looks up, suddenly aware of the childish nicks on his jaw.

"Umm…um, yeah. Yes. Yes, please."

Her eyes remind him stupidly of lamps, shining. She takes his cup in her hands.

"Now there's a nice girl," his mother says, lines of her mouth set. "Would it kill you to say hello, David?"

Yes, David thinks, watching as she gives a brief, perfunctory smile and moves towards the kitchen car. Yes it would.

In the evenings he does as he is expected to, and joins the traveling bachelors in the dimly lit leisure car for a hand or two of whatever game is most favored that night. The lowered lamps and the steady profusion of alcohol make him feel as though he is sleeping. Not breathing. As the youngest he is gently, ritually mocked.

"Take those kids in Boston," Says Fitzsimmons, a Philadelphian with an impressive, ginger moustache. The coffee girl appears behind him, bearing gin this time. He nods absently. "Protesting like that over something as simple as a kiss in a canoe. What do you say to that, young Jacobs?"

David smiles to himself, not looking at the girl, rearranging his cards.

"Shameless," a corpulent man from Queens interjects. "What a thing to get all up in arms over. There's turmoil abroad, you know. There are people starving. There are _wars_."

"I wasn't asking _you, _Phillips, I was asking our younger gentleman. Not, of course," a roguish grin, "that I am implying that he's any authority on the matter."

"The boy's at the age where he may as well be in one of those canoes himself," another man slyly offers, and in the rough chorus of answering laughter, David is saved from answering.

"More gin, gentlemen?" The waitress asks.

"Top it up!"

David makes the mistake of locking eyes with her. They are luminous, sweetly set. Green. Once again he is a child.

-

"_David, you didn't!"_

_Sarah actually pressed the fingertips of one slim hand to her cheek, as though she had been slapped. _

"_What?" David shot back, cornered. He sat at the kitchen table, knees tight from the caffeine and nerves. "I was being honest! And…and inquisitive…and, um…"_

"_David," Sarah said in that firm voice that seemed to lend her the ultimate, sisterly authority. "You can't ask a girl how many times she's been kissed."_

"_She asked me first!"_

"_So?"_

_Sarah whipped the dishtowel at his shoulder as she passed, already laughing. David shifted in his chair, furious, as she moved towards the mantle and began to dust. _

"_So…so she shouldn't ask me questions that she doesn't want…you know…"_

"_David, you're acting like a child," she said pragmatically, shooting a knowing grin over her shoulder. "What business is it of yours anyways?"_

"_I was paying for her coffee!" David countered, voice growing shrill._

"_And she was being nice enough to go for lunch with you in the first place!"_

"_I was being nice!"_

"_That's not a nice question!"_

"_What? No one's ever asked you that?"_

"_No!" Sarah said, raising her eyebrows. She lifts a stern, family photo taken years ago, and her hands are steady. "Not even…well, no one." The slim beginnings of a blush pushed up from her collar, but David was not paying attention, slumping down into an uneasy curve in the unforgiving chair. He pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, his eyes, his mouth. _

"_I wouldn't've been mad or anything," he mumbled against his palms_

"_You say that now," Sarah said, shaking the towel out. The dust colored the air, made it softer. "But what if she'd kissed three men before you?"_

"_I don't care," _

"_Four!"_

"_I don't care, Sarah."_

_A silence. Sarah replaced the photo carefully, angling it, running the soft pad of her finger along the edge of the mantle, outlining the grooves in the wood._

"_Really?" _

-

"Santa Fe!" Phillips repeats, eyes widening under thick, bushy brows. "What in the devil's name are you going to Santa Fe for?"

"A beau would be my guess," Fitzsimmons, grinning at him across the table. "A romance! Tell us all about her, Jacobs."

"Nothing like that," David says, giving a perfunctory smile. "Just a story. I'm a reporter for the Tribune in New York."

"Most certainly a romance," Fitzsimons tells Phillips, eyeing David with no small amount of cunning. "Very modest, our young Jacobs."

"Very modest indeed," another man laughs, watching Phillip's mouth work in consternation. David laughs too; there is not much else to do. The pile of cards in the center of the table is disorganized, slippery. He shifts his own hand, rearranges them in awkward fingers. With no sunlight coming in from the windows it is difficult to discern the exact expressions of the men across from him.

"The Tribune you said?" Fitzsimmons asks, his voice casual, overlying a keen, intellectual edge. David looks up.

"Uh…yes sir."

"Sir!" Fitzsimmons barks; his mouth is full of blue smoke. The gentlemen around the table laugh. "Now, now, son, I may be old but I'm certainly not _sir._ Not _yet_, by God. Call me Fitz."

"Alright, uh, Fitz," David smiles sheepishly. The name is the sharp prickle of soda on his tongue.

"Fantastic paper," Fitz tells him, placing a card carefully down on the pile and sniffing. "What I wouldn't give for an outfit like that in Philadelphia. I read every edition when I spent a summer in the Bronx, 1896. Although I've heard it's changed hands since?"

"In 1901," David admits, watching as the man beside him places a card down on the pile.

"You worked under Filbert's editorship?"

"I started in 1903."

"Fantastic," Fitz gives a small smile. "Warms the heart to see such a young man already doing such great work, doesn't it gentlemen?"

There are murmurs around the table, although David is certain most are just in anticipation of his move. Fitz smiles, showing small, foxish teeth. In the darkness, David feels as though here is something hiding behind those teeth, alert, ready to spring. He tosses a card in, stung, thinking of the work he is doing, and what he feels he should be doing, existing somewhere just outside of his reach.

-

In Omaha the motion that David has come to count as a heartbeat slows to a stop. The passengers have their luggage moved to another train, make the connection, start heading south towards Santa Fe. David barely bothers to set up his things again in his new, still darkened compartment, pressing his forehead against the small window, wondering if the coffee waitress is switching trains to or if she is headed back towards New York, still serving with her pretty hands, cultivating the distance between their bodies.

Fitz is on this train as well – David has seen him in passing, has caught the sly teeth and the ginger moustache, but has not gone out of his way to say hello. Without the barrier of the other gentlemen he imagines a reunion to be awkward, unnecessary. Fitz's interest in him seemed to purely extend only to his imagined pranks and misdeeds, perhaps things Fitz had even done himself, or had wanted to do. He spends his last day traveling in the dining car again, his notes reluctantly spread before him, white and sparse. He begins to work.

Chewing on his lower lip, he circles dates, times, American names: _Summers. Drake. August 3__rd__, 1903. Doheny. California's Petroleum Queen._

"Get your facts straight, first," Denton says in the back of his head, circling around his chair, leaning on the table next to him. "No point in building a skyscraper if your foundation won't keep it standing."

David's scowl deepens as he circles a graph, outlining the rise in productivity. What was the point of all this research when all Williams wanted was a clever turn of phrase for the "of interest" section?

"Always have more than what you need," Denton advises. "Better to edit down than to try and beef up."

David turns the page. A few notes on Santa Fe and its history, riddled with Spanish names and Apache expressions that make his tongue feel thick and inexperienced. A quote from Horace Greeley – _something for Walters_, he thinks with a bitter twinge. A good old slice of Americana.

"A good reporter doesn't let his feeling get in the way," Denton says closely in his ear. "A good reporter writes what he sees, what he hears, and what he knows."

When David looks out the windows now he sees more and more the sweet, slopes of green that colored Ohio and Idaho turning to dust; dust that stretches on towards cliffs, dry river beds, bristles and bursts of brown dead grass. Oklahoma turns to Texas, Texas turns to New Mexico. David thinks of Santa Fe and feels as though he has swallowed steel wool; he cannot fathom why, all his costs have been paid for and the town is civilized, despite what his mother may think. The article he could write blinded.

"Every tiny project is important," Denton reminds him doggedly. "Irrelevant as it may seem, you must be ready to defend every word."

He is not concentrating. He tries out a few openers in his head, almost half sure he could finish the project without seeing the well at all. _Van Pyke oil well still up and running after two years! Two miles off the capital of Santa Fe, New Mexico's most faithful well still gushing…_

"Edit it down," Denton urges.

_Two years of oil, jobs, and stability in Santa Fe, New Mexico!_

"The fewer the words, the more powerful."

_Anywheresville, U.S.A., boasts of two-year oil well! _

Denton's knee jars his and he has to stop.

He realizes he is breathing hard, that when he touches his fingers to his forehead they come back wet. There is no one across from him.

The train rumbles on.

-

_The coffee girl is smoking a cigarette in the small compartment that bridges the dining and kitchen cars. David is standing at the door and she looks at him like a lady might look out at someone from a painting. David looks at her hands and can see the bones at the same time. They are milk white, thin, radiant in the dark. It is too dark._

_He knows it is a dream, because they are in New York again, the buildings are crowding up against the windows, rough edges scraping the glass. Following him. In a stack of newspapers David sees a collection of familiar faces, of himself, grimacing. The girl blows a hot plume of smoke against the side of his face and when he looks back she has turned into someone else._

-

When it stops in Santa Fe it is the middle of the night. David feels the slowing of engines in his sleep, the quiet, understated halting. He turns over, murmurs something, can barely breathe. In the morning he will repack his sparse things, self-consciously smooth the sheets, move to step out in to a morning. It will be a morning of a different breed, though; a different creature. When his foot hits the tarry wood of the station floor, cap tilted back to catch the light, he will finally see what the fuss was about. The sun, everywhere.

* * *

Heart betas Falco and PolyesterRage whipping me into shape.


	4. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

Santa Fe is a series of jewels.

David does not think this, but he feels it in the way the top of his head seems to have opened up and presented itself to the sky. He stares out, electrified, from the startling new car sent to pick him up and take him to the hotel, drinking in the sweet, fruit colored buildings, the cool adobe roofs, and the weird, red mountains in the distance, gnawing up the horizon like bloody gums. Even the air is strange to the taste, something sweet and rotting, like meat or wine. And the light; wide and expansive, spreading like liquid. Everywhere. In his mind, the train ride collapses into the length of one murky, sleepless minute. He has closed his eyes and opened them again, but now he is somewhere else.

"Fifteen minutes, senor," the driver says from the front, and David blinks, always moving.

The streets are wider than rivers, dusty and unmarked, sparsely populated with faces that seem both familiar and foreign at the same time. American brows and chins, darkened; Mexican, Asian, Apache. An absence of the familiar noses and hair colors from his childhood, the frenetic pace slowed to a languid, underwater crawl. He can only imagine his mother's reaction at his driver; a small, dark man with eyes as flat as old sarsaparilla and a truly alarming moustache.

_Your things will be stolen the moment you step off the train! _She waves her dish rag in his head, an anomaly against the sandy wooden buildings, the strange creams and startling reds. Something inside him turns over, and he does not know if he is elated or terrified. He cannot account for either feeling.

"How far is the oil rig out of town?" David asks, leaning forward.

"Half an hour, senor," the driver replies, glancing backwards with flat eyes.

"Thanks,"

"We go to the hotel first, drop off your things."

David toys with the Spanish word in his mouth, decides against it. "Um, thank you."

"Yes, senor."

The hotel is respectable enough and, he is embarrassed to find, much larger than his flat back in New York City. But space seems to be an easily done away with commodity – already David is swamped by it, sinking in it, completely astonished by the wide ranging parameters of this new land.

"Go West, young man," he murmurs to himself with half a smile, and then immediately feels stupid. He runs cold water into the wide, porcelain wash bin. It feels different from New York. It is cooler, it tastes sweeter; it drips from his mouth like honey.

He grabs his reporting satchel, stuffing a stubby pencil into the front pocket, wishing that he had a lighter suit to wear in the new heat. As he opens the door, he cannot resist one more glance out the wide window at the dusty, empty town square, the carnal jut of mountains in the distance. The quizzical, deep blueness of sky.

The driver is waiting for him outside, something he is surprised to see. He thinks of New York, and how he would have to call a second cab or, more likely, walk the distance to save himself the fare. He thinks also of Walters, sitting behind his desk, approving expenses and smiling to himself. A show of generosity with one hand behind the back.

"Senor," the driver said, voice empty of emotion, pulling the car door open.

"Thanks," David says. "Thank you."

As the car thrums and bangs, kicking violently into gear, David composes in his mind a letter to Sarah, one he will not have the time to send. _It's so bright here,_ he tells her in his mind. _And wide. You could take all the people in our building and they wouldn't fill the main square. _His eyes are glued to the window as they roll shakily through the plaza, down a main street, and towards the outskirts of town. The houses seem unreal, like stage facades with stage people moving in and out of them, plastered with posters advertising circuses, musicals, rodeos. _It's like what happened when Momma cleared away all those weeds in the flower box she kept specially when we were kids_, David says to Sarah in his mind._ And once the weeds were gone the flowers grew differently. _

The buildings grow shabbier as they get farther and farther from the center of town, but David cannot stop staring, mesmerized. They give way to shacks, and then to empty lots, and then to the sublime tyranny of the desert. David actually gapes, his eyes straining against the vastness of it, searching for a foothold.

"You know where you're going?" He asks the driver, shocked.

"Si, senor," the driver replies flatly. David gets the idea that he does not even know what he is saying. He turns back to the view. _It's light forever here,_ he tells Sarah. The horizon gapes at him, a wide, beckoning mouth. _You take away the mountains and you see forever._

-

_The first time David got drunk was when his father turned fifty two and, after Les had extracted himself from the table and dashed down the stairs to meet up with his friends on the corner, Esther dug out a glass bottle of cheap whisky from the cabinet, citing tradition, before pouring her daughter a tea cup full and her son the first glass of many._

_The second time was with Bryan._

_The second time there was no embarrassment, no reigning in of errant syllables, no desperate attempts to choke his laughter upon meeting his sisters' amused eyes in her flushed, happy face. He did not grope along the wall, spine straight as a poker, terrified of being accused of sloppiness, of childishness, before making it to his bed which he had collapsed upon with a low, happy groan. Being drunk with Bryan was like having his muscles melt, like having himself turned inside out; he was loose, he was giddy._

"_Congratulations, Mr. Jacobs," Bryan had said, toasting his third glass of scotch with his fifth. "Mr. Walters of the New York Tribune is interested enough in your, might I say, incredibly convincing case that he wishes for an interview with you in a weeks time." His smile was a crooked shard, a knowing smirk._

"Your_ incredibly convincing case," David corrected, laughing. The words were soft and slushy between his teeth. "Bryan…Bryan, I can't thank you…thank you enough for writing that letter."_

"_Yes you can," Bryan said, grin deepening. "You've been thanking me for the last hour, David."_

"_S'true, though, I can't!" David laughed, sipping at his scotch once more. The liquor slopped at his lips, slipped down his chin, he hastily wiped it away with the back of his hand. _

"_Such a mistake," Bryan shakes his head. "Introducing you into my field. You're going to have me looking old fashioned in a year."_

"_No," David grinned. "No I'm not."_

"_Sure you are. Old bastard like me."_

"_You're not old," David had said, looking down at his glass. He could see the print from his lip on the rim, the slow ooze of the liquor inside, the sharpness of ice. A pause, and Bryan's gruff, short laughter. _

"_I don't feel old," he said shortly. David took another shot of the liquor, and did not remember the rest of the night._

-

The rig is a skeleton, sitting crouched on its haunches, as though waiting to spring.

David is led around the circumference twice before they finally locate the manager, a portly man named Graves who looks at David as though he has dropped in from the sky. David feels this way, alien, with the wrong type of shoes for the desert ground; it moves like flesh under his feet, makes him dizzy. He chalks it up to the grind of machinery, the glare off the pale sands, and the close smell; sand, sweat, something burning. Behind him, the rig is pumping, thrusting deep into the ground, drawing blood. In this close, blank space it is an anomaly, as unexpected as a space ship from a Verne novel, or the rib cage of a giant, picked over by shining, muscular ants. He tries to give a friendly smile. Graves' face reminds him of a snail, something squashed.

"You the kid from the Tribune?" Graves asks, chewing the words like tobacco on his back teeth. The smile drops from David's face. _Kid_ is what men like Matthews called him back at the office. He studies Graves; the fat jaw, the small eyes, the black sweat, the dark, rotten stubble.

"David Jacobs," he says as coldly as he can, tucking his satchel into the dampness of his underarm and holding out one clean palm. It is duly grasped and jolted. David pulls it back and notices the smear of grease, as though someone has spat.

_Don't think like that_, he tells himself, his thoughts going blank as the manager's mouth moves.

"…Stevens can't see you today, we got the shareholders from Philedelphia…" David tries to concentrate, but from the corner of his eye he can see a body, slick with oil and sweat, stepping off the deck and craning it's neck in the sun, working the muscle. His fingertips feel cool and sticky.

"Not a problem," he is saying back, and he is not sure how. He licks his dry lips and digs the stub of a pencil out from his satchel.

"No need for notes," Graves mumbles nervously.

"Just in case, sir," David smiles, licking the tip of his pencil. "How long have you been in charge here?"

"Long enough," Graves grunts. David's brows furrow. "Listen, I didn't know this was some sorta interview."

"It's… well, it's just a few questions," David says pleasantly. Graves' small eyes slick over his face, focus on the notebook. The wind is picking up and David can smell everything. The same smell off the factories near his flat, the same smell in the wake of cars.

"I'll answer anything about the rig," Graves says finally.

"Alright…" David says slowly, pressing the blunt tip of the pencil to the paper. "How long do you expect the well to keep producing?"

"Hard to say," Graves says, warily pleasant. He motions awkwardly with his head towards a few shanties built into the sands around the other side of the rig. "You mind? I have a lot to look to, you know."

"I understand," David says, falling into step with the manager.

"To answer your question," Graves says, shambling. "It's hard to say. Never had one run so well as we do now. Could be another two years, could be another two minutes."

"And how many of your employees are from Sante Fe?" David asks, stumbling slightly in the sand, his face heating. "The general consensus of what I've researched is that this rig is providing a good source of industry and revenue for the local laborers."

"All our men are Sante Fe men, more or less," Graves says, with a small rumble of pride, like a dog picking up it's ears.

"And they camp out here?"

"The deck hands do," Graves says, smacking his thin lips. "We bus 'em in from town in shifts to stay six days, an' they get the one off. Out here," he adds, warming, "we got all the facilities men like them will be needing, mess hall and the like. 'Course the machinery operators and the primary supervisors get the _two_ days off, see, so they can spend some time with their families."

"What about the deck hands' families?" David asks in spite of himself. Graves turns and views him with those snail eyes, suspicious, shelled. Behind his face is Walter, sitting in his expansive office, shuffling his papers and saying words like _socialistic tendencies._ David waits.

"What you got to understand is that deck men are younger, see, and they don't got families to spend time with," Graves says, but his words are slower, and sound like the cocking of a gun.

"All of them?" David says pleasantly. "Is that a requirement for a deck hand?"

"Look," Graves says, rolling to a stop and crossing his fat arms. "I don't know what your angle is on this story, kid, but I was told you were coming in to do a piece on how long the rig's been running."

"I am, sir," David says carefully, pencil poised. "Just want to get the full story."

"Well here's your full story," Graves says. "Machinery operators and primary supervisors get two days off. Deck hands get one." A pause. "You wanna make a note of that?"

David's tongue slides between his teeth. To his left there is a harsh yell, rough laughter, the sound from underground like hot breath. The well picks up, the noise growing louder.

"No sir," David says tightly. Graves nods, and the two continue walking.

"So I've read that the wages here are competitive," David continues. His writing is darker, tighter, his fingers tense. "With the wells further South paying their employees less, how does that affect your profits?"

"Not as much as you'd think," Graves tells him, his voice guarded. "We lose a bit by paying our men right, see, but they repay us with their productivity and loyalty." David could have said as much, he's heard the line before. Two men walk by, stripped to the waist, streaked with oil. One of them pats the other's shoulder, and David swallows at the sound. Wet skin on skin.

"And what about when the oil well finally does run out?" David asks, throat dry. "What happens to the employees when they're suddenly left without a job?"

"Same thing as what would happen on any oil well, I expect," Graves says. "Higher level staff move onto the next rig and lower level staff find another job. Everyone knows the risks when they're hired, everyone knows what they're getting into. 'Course on this particular rig, we'll be paying our lower level staff a bit of a bonus at the end of the run, seeing as it's quite…uh, unprecedented."

David raises his eyebrows, and makes the note with a small cross next to it, marking it.

"Now if you don't mind," Graves says abruptly as they reach the shanties, turning a narrowed eye on David. "I got real work to do."

David's jaw clenches at the insult, but he manages a tight smile. "You've been very helpful."

"You'll get a chance to talk to Stevens tomorrow if you want," Graves says, hitching up one side of his overalls and squinting at the sun, judging it's distance. "You wanna get an eyeful of how the well works you can take a look now, but don't go poking your nose in the workings, and _don't _be talking to the deckhands. They got a lot of work to do, and their trained particular 'cuz the rig can be dangerous."

"Is the rig not going to be in operation tomorrow?" David asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Takin' the morning off for the presentation to the shareholders," Graves says, already turning his back. "Suspect you'll be gone once that's over."

"You never know," David smiles pleasantly, but Graves is no longer listening.

-

David has to walk the circumference of the rig once before he can stop grinding his back teeth. His jaw aches with it. In his mind is Graves' mouth, damp and large, saying words like _kid_ and _angle _and _real work, _and even deeper is Walters', smiling. He knows where this wound comes from. David wants to spit, but his mouth is dry as cotton.

_There will always be people who will treat you like shit,_ Bryan says in his ear, voice close and hot. David shakes his head fiercely, as though shaking away an insect. _On the other side of the country_, he thinks to himself. He thinks, _get a grip_.

He sighs and looks up at the rig once more, setting his capable mind to working at it, picking it apart and comparing it to the diagrams he looked up at the library in New York. The mechanical analysis cools him, he feels the ridge of muscles along his shoulders beginning to loosen, to melt. The wind has died down, and he can hear the workings properly now; the creak of wood, the laughter of the deck hands, the hot, close sounds from underneath the ground.

He opens the notebook again. He licks the pencil. He works, he keeps his mind occupied, because he cannot think of what else to do. He steps closer, vaguely curious. It occurs to him that this may be the first and last time he will ever be near something as strange, something as skeletal and menacing and new as this. _Get an eyeful of how the well works and don't be talking to the deckhands_ is what Graves had said. He watches the levy operator, sweating in his shirt sleeves; the man sweeping out the lower platform, face obscured by the black; the sheer mass of bodies inhabiting the rig, all of them working, sweating, mechanical. But some are not working. David eyes three men standing a few feet back from the rig, notes the cigarette in one of their hands, the lazy loop of smoke, the shots of laughter in the desert air.

_What if they don't answer my questions? _David, younger, whining like an child in Bryan's ears.

David takes a few steps. The sand pools, shifts, gets into his shoes. One of the deckhands turns, revealing a dark, sloped cheek, neatly spits.

_You make 'em answer, _is what Bryan had said. _And if they don't answer, you get the answers anyways. There's always another way._

David walks forwards.

"Excuse me," he says, licking his lips. One of the men turns around and raises an eyebrow at him, and David feels like a child. His hands are very white before the worker, supplicating. "You work as deck hands, am I correct?"

"Who are you?" The voice is a smear, wet sounding, dribbling down lips.

"David Jacobs, reporter for the Tribune."

And suddenly it is different. The man beside the deckhand stiffens, the rope of muscle in his shoulder rising. Under the streaks of oil his body is sinewy, fleshed and golden, and as David opens his mouth and says something – words, enquiries – he feels something tugging at him, like a child hanging to his sleeve, like a younger brother. The man turns around.

David stops. He has to. He is seventeen again, and Jack Kelly is looking at him.

-

_He does not remember clearly, because at the time he thought it didn't matter._

_A few things. A hand on his brother's shoulder – so small, at the time – palm rough with cordoroy and soap, sweat crawling under the fresh, stiff clothes that his mother had darned up the night before. Can't sell papers looking like a street rat, she had said, over and over again. David, you go get your mother's glasses._

_But more than just that; the unusual heat of the day, the smell of manure, the absence of trolleys. The knot in his stomach at the size of the crowd, and Poppa's dime in his pocket. The strange limberness of being young and outside in August, licking the sweat from his upper lip._

_Get 'em, Cowboy, someone had said, and it happened. The knock of a shoulder against his, the whip of hair in his face. The giddy coupling of anger and uncertainty. He can't remember the question, but he can remember the answer. Running._

_Later on he would be the one screaming, he would be the one spurring his own legs on, feeling his heart pound in the root of his tongue. Run, he would yell. But he would be the only one moving._

-

David's mouth is open, he can taste the desert. Jack's is closed.

His face hasn't changed too much in the years grown between, still the same smooth, open planes, still the same skin, the same flesh, but cut of all baby fat, deepened, gilded. David sees many things at once; a handful of newspapers, a red bandana, a fistful of licorice whips. He sees an extra setting at the table and his sisters' face as her hand is touched. He sees a retreating back.

"Jack," he says, but Jack's eyes are hard.

"Don't," he says, and the word is a door slamming. He looks to the men next to him, they are still smoking, eyes turning discreetly away, and back to David's pale face. "What are you doing here?"

"I…" David holds up the notebook, as though this explains everything. His mouth feels empty. He wants to smile, he wants to reach out, but Jack's face is a closed fist and though David has never truly, really been the smart one, there are things he knows.

"Just go," Jack says. And before David can say a word, Jack is looking away.

And David is going. He stumbles backwards, without thinking. He turns, he breathes, he begins to walk away.

Not far away, the car that carried him here is waiting, shining like a new coin, like the shell of a beetle. David will get into it and nod at the driver and soon there will be more and more miles between his body and Jack's body. And David will go up to his hotel room, his wide, expensive hotel room, and his face will be as still and serene as a mask while inside his thoughts are bursting like flowers, like firecrackers, like those expensive eggs that dropped from his sister's hands when they were young and hit the floor, one by one by one.

* * *

Thank you to pretty lady Falco for beta-ing, I'd be a mess without you.


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

_In his dreams, the walking away always takes longer, and he never really can. _

_I came back for you, he is saying to Jack's body, slumped against the alley wall. I came and got you, Jack, I found you. _

_Jack is saying nothing because Jack does not want to be found._

David wakes up in his Sante Fe hotel room, sucking in because he has been drowning again, and sweating because here the air is different, close, like a dry, wool blanket. His pale body is tight, like a taut rubber band, and he looks to the window, thinking of snapping, of shooting off across the desert sky.

He says the name and lies down again, palms finding his eyes and smothering them.

-

The shine of the desert is intensified today, the fine point of a needle, digging. It is something David probably would not notice had he slept more. But there was only the brief bursts of dreams, the frenetic pace of hands and heart, the wide ranging parameters of his thoughts that looped in successive circles.

"Stupid," he murmurs to himself now, scanning the crowd. Burning, American faces and brows that shine, none familiar. Only one woman, her fan working wildly. A photographer struggling with his tripod in the desert. The elaborate trappings and dressings of wealth and status. No workers. Just a collection of benefactors and shareholders wearing ceremonial smiles and watching the rig, empty of bodies.

"Gentlemen," The owner is speaking, and David licks the tip of the pencil. His mouth is dry. The rig has stopped pumping for the day, so the ground is still, unbreathing. "Our success here at this well has been in part to a damn good stroke of luck. But also from the support we've received from a very few distinguished men whom I am fortunate enough to have before me."

He circles words through his notes, hands like clockwork; mechanical strokes. In his mind is Jack's grinning face, changed with age. Appearing, disappearing. The owner – Stevenson? David thinks absently. Or Stevens? – has his hands in front of his stomach, folded pleasantly, as though reclining. Graves stands beside him, inserting a finger into the collar of his suit and pulling.

"The oil that this well has produced has been enough to continuously stoke the economy of our surrounding regions and bring it up to date with the rest of the country, not to mention create great profit and industry across this land as I'm sure you're well aware of."

David tries not to look towards the barracks, unsightly and gray, poor barnacles. He wonders if Jack is in there, sleeping. David has never seen him asleep – mussed, he imagines, wildish and rumpled. Sarah's seen him sleeping – he remembers with a sudden surge. Out on the fire escape, she had told him, off hand. Why? Why the fire escape? So he could see her in the mornings, she had said, blushing, and David felt it in his heart; the impossible rending, the hairline fracture, worming upwards.

"Though the list of names we are eternally indebted to goes on, it would be criminal not to mention Mr. David Spencer who continues to act as a go-between for the owners and the highway robbers… which is to say the State government here in New Mexico…" a brief reception of chuckles, indulgent smiles. David sweats. "But also Colonel Edward Sherman, Mr. Jesse Martins, Mr. Grant Dairy, and of course, Mr. Cornelius Fitzgerald for his…unprecedented work in Philadelphia on our behalf."

The air is still, no wind to ruffle cloth or sand, to pick at the pages of his notebook. He scribbles the names down but is only thinking of one. The owner rounds off his remarks, unrumpling his hands and revealing their clean, smooth palms to the sky, and in the distance David sees one of the barrack doors open. A figure he is not looking at leans against the door jamb, watching, cooking in the sun.

"The gala tonight is at seven o-clock," the owner says, smiling, and David caps his notes distractedly. "Gentlemen, from both myself and the owners of the Van Dyke well, a heartfelt thanks. Let's only hope that the next two years promise to be as fruitful as the last!"

The polite applause sound like cracking knuckles. The owner whispers something to Graves who nods and turns to the barracks, tugging at the sleeve of his jacket as though desperate to shed it. A few more doors are opening, a few more bodies, distant and lean with loping arms and legs. The workers getting ready to start up production again, he thinks, mouth dry as sand. He shoves the pencil into his pocket with shaking fingers and does not look at the bodies approaching, watches his notes, not knowing how to move.

"Bad business," a man beside him is murmuring, voice sliding under the rising conversation, the congratulations. "You heard about that Philedelphia debacle?"

"With Fitzgerald? Hardly."

The name rings in David's head like a bell. He is careful not to turn around, looks instead to the workers. They reach the rig, bodies settling into position, different from yesterday – cleaner, maybe, with matching blue shirts that are stiff and new on their backs. A show, a rodeo. His eyes pick at the faces, probing.

"Very bad business, doesn't go beyond about twenty people in the whole city, though I'm beginning to suspect…"

"Oh, as to the money? Pure speculation, you don't possibly think…"

"Why not, Henry? Don't be a cad, this isn't the first time that this sort of affair has gone in …well, you know, _this_ sphere."

He glances over at Stevens, who is speaking with a red haired man in a suit, smiling graciously, hands at his belly again as though pressing in, containing. David takes out his pencil again, but the two men behind him have turned away, angling their mouths downwards so their words are no longer distinct.

"Not at all," he can hear Stevens saying, his face cracking with a grin, and even from far away the jaunty boom of his voice carries. "I'm sure you agree, I think it would be in our mutual interests…"

But David is not listening anymore. He sees him. He sees Jack, he is certain, he knows that body, angular and ranged and shuffling from the farthest barrack, hands shoved hard into his pockets. Jack of the two-penny Western novels. Jack of the quick, loping legs. Jack, who has been with him longer than he realized, sitting in the back of his skull and waiting - the name comes to him easily after long years of forgetting, like something rolled into his palm, something hidden up his sleeve.

"After all," Stevens voice, overlapping, David drops his pencil and quickly bends to pick it up, hiding his face, sweating. "What with the current sway of the voters after the last gubernatorial…"

"…absolutely un_bear_able," the sole female voice lilts, "this sort of heat, simply drains a body, don't you think?"

"The odds are in our favour to…"

"And my hotel! Not to embarrass our dear host, but the smell! Never in New York…"

When David glances up Jack is looking, scowling, face closing up like a hand fisting shut. A few of the gentlemen are wandering closer to the rig, eyes sweeping up the vast skeleton, murmuring pleasantries, and it takes David only seconds to decide. He begins to walk, legs feeling as though they belong to someone else. He feels like he is dreaming. He feels like he is underwater. He can't stop his knees.

_Jack had come to him, challenging, closing the space between their bodies and reaching out, thumbing through the spines of David's papers, nosing bluntly and irrevocably in._

Now David comes to him, stumbling only once. Someone yells out an order and the rig, groaning, begins to move.

-

_David is seventeen, and the crooked curve of his useless spine is flattened against the wall as he leans, knees drawn up to his collarbone, head angled back, listening. In the next room, his mother is holding his sister._

"_I know," she is saying, a voice as worn as her hands. "My sweetheart, I know. You think your mother hasn't had her own heart broken? Shh…" he hears the creak of the bench, the age-old sound of rocking, and recalls being rocked the same way, held tight, as though his mother's bones could shield him, create around him a house. "My sweetheart, I know. You know, your brother's a smart boy, he's going to have himself lots of handsome friends, and soon you'll forget all about that one."_

_Sarah cries like a child, burying her face in her slim palms, her shoulders waving and hitching as storms rise and ebb inside her. _

"_I know it doesn't feel like it, my bubbala. Come now. You're being silly, my sweetheart, you two didn't even kiss. You listen to your mother, he's a man. Men are like that. Your brothers, your father even. You'll meet enough of them in your life, I know. Shh…"_

_David, jealous like a child, wants to be in his mother's arms. He wants to be smoothed by her palms, patted, wants to have the Shema recited over him again like a lullaby until his eyes are as sore and raw as his shoulders and finally empty. He knows this sort of thing is now unavailable to him, something exclusive to a strange and suddenly foreign alliance of women that do not have room for him._

_He pushes himself to his feet, extending awkward elbows and knees. He makes up his mind to go to Sante Fe as soon as the time is right, to get Jack, to find him silhouetted against the horizon with his hat on and tell him the words that will make him come back. To Sarah, he thinks. To make Jack come back to Sarah._

-

"Figured you wouldn't let up," Jack says.

"Nope," David shrugs, pressing back what feels like a fever. His friend up close is too much to bear; he is a memory concentrated, cut of baby fat and – his mother again, picking Jack apart with her seamstress fingers – too thin, too rangy. David looks straight at him, and it is like looking into the sun.

"Listen," Jack says, cutting his old partner with a brief glance. "You better say what you gotta say, whatever it is you gotta say, and then beat it 'fore I get Graves. I know you ain't supposed to be talking to me."

"Graves," David repeats, then laughs, incredulous. "You're not going to go get Graves."

"Oh, you know I won't then?" The color of him is the same but deepened, that inexpressible gold, but the defensive hunch to his shoulders is new, the sharpness of the profile, the meanness of the mouth. Jack is not looking at him.

"What are you doin' out here, anyways?" He murmurs, shoulders strung up tight.

"I…I came to find you."

"Yeah?" Jack looks at him shrewdly. "What's the notebook for? Findin' me?"

"It's…well, I'm…" David falters. A passing worker smacks at Jack's arm, rumpling his shirt.

"C'mon, Mick! Graves's gonna get your ass…"

"Leave it, Charlie."

"Sorry, sir," Charlie says suddenly, catching sight of David's shoes, his suit. He tips his hat briefly and is gone, jogging away. David tries not to smile.

"Mick?" He asks.

"McMahon," Jack grits his teeth.

"What, still too good for Sullivan?"

"Don't get smart."

"Why don't you wanna talk?" David asks, leaning.

"I'm workin', dumbass."

"Don't call me a dumbass, Jack Kelly."

"Jack Kelly. God damn," Jack repeats. Something like a laugh escapes him, and his eyes cut to David's face. "Alright, you wanna talk? Whaddaya wanna talk about, Davey? I ain't got nothing to say to you."

"Maybe I got something to say to you."

"Well you're taking a god damn long time about it, an' I got..."

"Look," David cuts him off, glancing up at the rig, checking for Graves. "Jack, listen. You got the night off tonight?"

Jack turns and spits clean into the sand, breathing out hard through his nose.

"Yeah," he says after a moment. "You'd probably hunt me down anyhow."

"Let me buy you a drink somewhere," David says, heart beating in the root of his tongue.

"I know you got more money'n me, you don't gotta…"

"_Jack,_" David says. Jack comes abruptly to halt, and David suddenly realizes he is just as nervous. He is hunched, illuminated, and David feels his heart weaken, bruising easily like soft fruit. His old friend is still handsome after all this time, pared down and muscled, kicking at the sand under his shoe, hands punched hard into his pockets.

"Bus gets in about 'leven," he mumbles, and David breathes in, expanding. "The one that takes us back in. The boys usually go down to Senorita Maria's, but…" another kick, mountains move under his feet. "There's this place called Joe's just off of Doheny road."

"Alright," David says after a minute, throat dry. "I'll see you. You're going to be there? I'll see you there."

Jack opens his mouth to speak, but then draws it shut, quickly, dropping his head. David has only the briefest of seconds before a meaty palm lands hard on his shoulder.

"Mr. Jacobs?" David jumps, turns. The owner is standing just behind him, top hat in his hands, exposing a head of thick, Brilliantine'd hair to the sun. David breathes out and smiles, blood racing to his head.

"Sir!" He manages, and Stevens reaches to shake his hand, but he is looking past David, eyes fixed on Jack's face. With a brief nod Jack hitches up one shoulder and disappears, falling in with the other workers, removing himself. David blinks, tries to smile.

"Of the Tribune, correct? Spotted you by the notebook," Stevens says, switching focus to him as though Jack had never been. David studies his face, flustered, noting the fine-looking nose, the thick, dark brows, the eyes the color of storm clouds. A handsome face once, perhaps, gone to seed. "My boy, thank you so much for being here. I know it's nothing compared to the hard work you must be doing back East, but we do appreciate it."

David bites his tongue, his smile growing brittle at the corners. His heart knocking at the front of his ribs. "I go where I'm needed, sir."

"Yes, well, we want to spread the good word, you see," Stevens says jovially, his palm still tight against David's. David resists the urge to look towards the space where Jack's body once was, stares into the sun of Stevens' bristly smile. "I see you've been getting friendly with our work force, haven't you." It is not a question.

"Part of the job," David says, scrambling. "I was…I was just getting the worker's perspective here, sir. My editor is considering extending this into a piece of about five hundred words," he lies easily, "and it would be extremely useful to have a few quotes from ah…possibly the deck hands, you understand." He adopts the jovial tone as Stephen's face tightens subtly, the muscles working under the tanned skin. "Just about how well they're treated, how great it is to be working so close to the city."

Stevens's smile gets bigger and narrower as his lips close over yellowing teeth. Perhaps it is the heat, perhaps it is the swell and breath of the ground being worked, perhaps it is Jack's body being so close and so suddenly gone, but David feels dizzy. With every appearance of passing on a joke, Stevens leans in, patting David's shoulder with his free hand.

"I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Jacobs," he says coolly. "I know you've approached my workers before. They're cared for and happy. I thank you for your interest, but perhaps it's better suited to championing the rights of the Eastern Europeans back in New York than it is out here, do I make myself clear?"

David swallows, growing still. Stevens leans back, and his eyes flash with good humor. His melting hair, his eyes, his suit. He could be looking at a favorite son.

"You do have an invitation to the Gala tonight, don't you my boy?" He asks, thick eyebrows creasing. David's mouth is tight as a knot.

"I wasn't invited, sir," he says cautiously. "My train leaves quite early tomorrow morning."

Stevens waves a thick paw, batting away Walter's budget.

"I'll have Graves rearrange things," he says, giving David's trapped hand one final shake. "It absolutely would not be the same without you. I'll have a conveyance sent to your hotel tonight at quarter to seven, is that agreeable?"

"I…"

"I insist," Stevens says, "tell you what. For you, the drinks will be on the house." David's eyes narrow. And there is something of Walters' in Stevens' face after all, something soft and cunning.

"Great," David manages. Stevens gives another grin and pats David's shoulder. The knock feels like something breaking.

"Just looking out for you, my boy," he says, and then he is gone. David looks towards the rig, but Jack is not there.

-

David presses his forehead to the picture window in his hotel room, drinking in the square, muscles buzzing.

_I found him,_ he tells Sarah in his mind. _You said I couldn't, but I did. Jack Kelly. Frances Sullivan. McMahon. _It is a crisp sense of pride, a cocky grin, it is standing out with Jack on the fire escape while his sister is still inside and it is past his brother's bedtime. The two of them, elsewhere.

And when the sun balloons upwards in the sky, when the heat culminates and the bodies disappear from the square, David will write the article distractedly, fixing the words together at odd angles, the sun illuminating his hands down to the finest hairs, the bluest veins. When quarter to seven comes - because time has a way of rushing at him now, flowing in like a wave and creeping up his ankles, consuming – he will put on his tie and push the hair back from his face and repeat the address like the Shema, without his mother's hands. _Joe's. Just off Doheny Road. Eleven o-clock._ In his mind, Jack is already waiting.

* * *

Thanks once again to my brilliant beta, Falco 3


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

David itches.

He has no pocket watch and is so spared the inclination to check it every minute, every second; he is not yet brave enough to ask another guest the time. Because they are here, all of them, in pressed and feathered droves, looking right at home in the arch, wooden loftiness of Santa Fe's finest hall. David is not.

He remedies this with drink. Avoiding scotch, he makes short of two whiskeys, a brand he does not even like, nervously thumbing the stem of his glass. People surge around him; men in their finer suits, their shoes polished and ostensibly untouched by the desert sands; impossible women, flutters of gloves and hair and rich fabric, offset by the hall's plush velvets, deep mahoganies. His hands, restless, find his pockets, his lapels, his hair. He is looking at the door.

_You have to learn how to socialize,_ Bryan's voice in his mind, looming suddenly, startling. _It's not just about the writing, you know. _David frowns. Even in his head, Bryan sounds as though he is speaking through a bad radio. Through too much space.

"Smug bastard," he murmurs to himself, placing his empty glass on the table with a firm clink. Remembering his mentor's wire-thin smile, his teasing, he goes for another whiskey.

"Impossible!" The lady beside him cries, a flurry of ringed fingers, tastefully rouged lips. "You can only im_ag_ine. And all this over a silly little letter that she had lost _months_ ago! Well, it's as I've always said…"

"A _little_ letter? My dear, the entirety of Philadelphia was in an uproar over the news."

He is not good with liquor, and he knows this as the drink hits the back of his tongue, curling it. He glances around for Stevens, sees nothing, and takes another sip. _Long enough to thank him for everything,_ he thinks to himself, heart knocking at the front of his ribs. _And then to Joe's. _

"The poor thing. Shut in for _days_, she was so embarrassed."

"She'll come around, they all do in the end."

"Cornelius, you are terrible."

He repeats the address in his head, only half listening to the surge of voices around him.

"But what does that have to do with the incident?"

"My dear fellow, what incident?"

"Fitz, you know as well as I do…"

David spots Stevens across the room and his heart gives a quick, painful thump. The bulk of the man is strangely more impressive encapsulated by his guests; he seems to be expanding, thick with benevolence. He looks up and sees David across the room; his chin dips in a nod, and his face is split by a grin that David would almost recognize as genuine.

"Recognize someone, Cornelius?"

"Not at all, so sorry, just momentarily distracted."

"It's the heat," a trill, "my head feels absolutely swimmy with it."

"A gin should fix you up, don't you think?"

David nods back, raising the rest of his whiskey in a brief toast, and makes his way towards the man.

-

"_Denton came by," Sarah said from the other room. _

_  
David tossed his bag onto his bed, frowning. The window was shut against the cold February air but he could still feel it slipping up his sleeves, drawing his flesh up tight. He said nothing. Sarah appeared at the door, one slim paw resting on the frame. David did not turn around._

"_In here?" David asked._

"_What, the bedroom? Of course not."_

"_What did he want?"_

_  
Sarah studied her brothers tall, straight back, clothed in professional tweed, his hair brushed and pressed. _

"_I don't know. He wanted to see you."_

"_I don't want to see him."_

"_After all he's done…"_

"_I don't want to see him."_

"_David…"_

_Despite the cold, despite the season, David threw open the window, clambered out, and slammed it shut behind him. _

_-_

"So good to see you, son," Stevens is saying, enveloping his hand in one inflated paw. "Almost thought you wouldn't show up!"

"I wouldn't miss it, sir," David says, smiling. _I'm not your son_, he thinks.

"And how are you enjoying Santa Fe?"

"It's beautiful," David answers truthfully, withdrawing his hand. Distinctly, more than ever, he feels watched. "I wish I could see more of it, but duty calls as usual." _Duty calls_, he thinks. Not his words. Walters' words, Matthews' words, the words of someone older slipping from his tongue.

"My boy, if you need an extension on your trip I'd be happy to get someone to call up Walters. He and I are old colleagues, you know."

"Oh, I…Sir, I wouldn't want to be the cause of trouble…"

"It's not a problem, not a problem," Stevens is saying, waving his hand, flashing the meat of his palm. "The last I checked there is a train back to New York, direct, in two days. I'll make sure you're on it. The least I can do for the valuable coverage, do we understand one another?"

The whisky glass sweats in David's hand. Everyone seems very close. Two days ago he would have no other reason to stay. "Yes, sir, I think we do."

"If there's anything you need, we'd be happy to oblige."

"I'm....I'm very grateful, sir."

"As are we, my boy, as are we," Stevens' eyes, twinkling, hold David's for too long. "Now. Are you interested in introductions? I realize you're very much alone here, quite the undesirable situation, don't you think?"

"No, sir, thank you," David says, heart speeding. "I actually just came to…ah, thank you personally and then head back to my room. I'm afraid I'm not used to this heat, it tires me out."

"Of course, of course," Stevens jocular grin seems to be wearing thin. "A car back to your hotel, perhaps?"

"I…prefer the walk."

"You New Yorkers are all the same," he laughs to himself, handsome shoulders shaking. "Now listen, son, tomorrow I'm holding a private drink for just a few friends, not to mention some of the ladies that have come down from California for this very event. I expect you there, as a matter of fact, I re_quire_ it, my boy."

"I…"

"Not a word. I'll send a boy around your hotel with the details tomorrow." Another wink. "A very pleasant night to you, Mr. Jacobs."

"The same to you," David says, but Stevens is already turning, displaying his wide back, his expensive jacket. David downs the rest of his whisky, placed the glass on the nearest empty table, and turns towards the door. The drink warms him from the inside out, the heat working it's way up. The night is crawling up the sky outside, waiting.

Doheny's is not far away; David hurries up the street, watching as the sun slides down the sky. The wide-ranging space makes him feel better, unbound by claustrophobic feathers and silks, guileless. Somewhere, they are playing music. He can hear it.

There is no one out on the street, save for a few natives, sleeping in doorways, and a figure a few blocks back, vaguely wandering. He turns left, then right, sees the sign down the block, faded by the sun, the color of meat. _Joe's. _His heart picks up, stuttering, he moves as though he cannot stop.

The inside of Joe's is gray, the blazing evening light culled and dimmed, dark in the corners. David's heart thrums in his wrists, his throat; he steps in and immediately feels the eyes of the few patrons turn indiscreetly to his shoes, his suit, the set of his shoulders. All except for Jack. David sees him in an instant, his eyes catching at his hunched back, his thin wrists, the cut of his profile. His vision splinters and he is not just looking at Jack the man but Jack the boy, Jack the liar, Jack the newsboy. His old friend sits at the bar, alone, slowly turning his mug around in its circle of condensation. David watches the deliberate tic of his fingers, the mechanical rotations, and it is almost as though someone is whispering in his ear; Jack looks up, sees David, and frowns.

David does not hesitate. He walks in.

The floor creaks under his feet and the smell laps at him messily - beer, cigarettes, the fug of breath, hot and close. The sun is setting but the day's heat still lingers, creeping in the corners. David walks straight up to the bar, ignoring the intensity of eyes, and leans against it, trying to look more certain than he is. Jack drains the rest of his beer with a tight mouth, not looking.

"So," Jack says.

"So," David replies. In the darkness, they could both be seventeen again.

-

_David remembers those months with a particular tenderness, remembers how Jack opened him up, untied him, unbuttoned him, easy as reaching out and pulling a string._

"_Gettin' good at this sort of thing, Davey," he had said, as David collapsed next to him by the statue. Davey, that was what he used to call him, lopping off consonants, bestowing on him a lazy, boyish affection. David automatically scanned for Les and caught sight of him leaning against the gate, oversized sign held dutifully above his head. _

"_You're better at gettin' their attention," he had said, concerns rested, cautiously adopting Jack's way of speaking, his idle diction._

"_Yeah, but you're smarter 'n' me, an' all," Jack had said, wrinkling his nose, digging into his pockets for a cigarette. _

"_You're smart, Jack."_

"_Yeah, well, I wish we had pamphlets or somethin'."_

_August of 1899, it's trappings; the idle newsboys, the frenetic energy, the soapy, worn smell of Jack's clothes and his body inside them. Jack lit a cigarette and David watched his fingers, his mouth, his tongue. _

"_Medda's lettin' us use the hall," Jack said around his smoke, shaking the match out and tossing it onto the cobblestone. _

"_No kidding," David had grinned, a time when he was still smiling easily. "That's great."_

"_She's great, yeah, she's shore somethin'," Jack had agreed. A sideways glance. "She likes you, y'know."_

"_Yeah?" The sweat, prickling under his curls. The sun, beating._

"_Yeah," Jack had looked over at David, he was grinning in an odd way, a way that made David's spine feel tight. "Pretty young thing like you," he joked, reaching out impulsively and dashing his hand through David's curls, ruffling, pulling._

"_Cut it out!" David had laughed, ducking._

"_Better watch out," Jack laughed, playfully knocking at David's jaw before withdrawing. "Someone's gonna take advantage of that pretty face some day."_

"_Cut it out," David had repeated, heart thudding weirdly. Jack took a drag off his cigarette and, laughing, leaned back and blew a long white plume of smoke against David's face. _

-

"You wanna siddown or what?" Jack mumbles, pushing his empty glass away. David wants to touch his friend, wants to put his hands on those shoulders and hold him in place, to make sure he doesn't disappear again.

"You wanna get a table?" He asks instead, glancing back at the men who line the bar, dirty hands on the countertop.

"Fine," Jack shrugs, lower lip jutting. He stands, nodding at the tender. "Two more, Toby. In the back."

"Sure thing, Mick."

One of the table's legs is shorter than the others, and the chairs don't match. David's mother – so far away, from so long ago – would hate this place, he can see her mouth scrunching in his head, can feel her disapproval. Jack takes a seat and slumps, staring at the ground, weirdly childish. David, in his suit, feels stiff.

"So whaddaya wanna talk about?" Jack asks. He feels like laughing, but one look at Jack's face, tilted down towards his feet, stops him. His friend's mouth is bent in a frown.

"I don't know," David says truthfully. Toby approaches, eyeing the both of them dolefully, putting down two steins of beer. David sees the filmy prints on the glass, the murky stains lining the bottom like silt. If Jack sees these things, he says nothing. "How…um, how have you been?"

Jack's eyes slide up and David flushes, heat crawling up from his collar. He had forgotten the scope of that stare. It was like missing a step in the dark.

"How you think I been?" Jack finally asks, reaching for his mug.

"Well…I dunno, Jack." His friend's mouth tenses at the name, knots. "That's why I'm asking. What have you been doing out here? I thought…" he thinks of the hat, the bandanna, the comic in his friend's pocket. Where have these things gone? Where could they be now? Jack is saying nothing, mulishly turning his glass round and round.

"Workin'," he finally says. "Here an' there. It ain't been…easy, I guess. Wanted to get work on a ranch somewhere, but you need 'sperience." His face darkens at this, and he lapses into silence. David remembers too well; Jack's wide-ranging dreams, his predilection for space, for the sky. David picks up his stein and raises it to his lips; the beer is bitter, dank.

"I'm a reporter," he blurts, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Good for you."

"Bryan…um, Bryan Denton mentored me. You remember Denton?"

David doesn't know why he is talking about Denton, and almost wishes he wasn't. Jack's eyes cut to his significantly, and then flick away.

"I remember Denton."

"Well…he mentored me."

Jack snorts like he knows something, takes a swig of his beer. David follows suit, brows knotting. He wants to ask, but does not want Jack to snap at him. Does not want Jack to leave.

"How's your family?" Jack asks. Though he is looking down, David can hear it - the old longing, the young boy.

"Good," David says. "Yeah, good."

"Yeah? How's your ma?"

"Well, she's…she's mom."

"An' Les? What is he now, thirteen?"

"He's fourteen. He's smart…he's, uh…" David laughs briefly. "He's really smart, you know. It's funny."

"I bet," Jack says, voice going light. "And…uh, Sarah?"

"Good," David says quickly. Jack nods, the corners of his mouth turning down.

"Prolly married now, huh? With a kid or somethin'?"

"No," David says lightly, looking down into his beer. "No, she never married."

"Gettin' old, isn't she?"

"She's not old," David counters, brow furrowing.

"What about you then?" Jack asks, angling his eyes away. When he speaks, his voice is higher, tighter. "Probably got yourself a wife, huh?"

David stares at his friend. "No, Jack." There is a silence, sticky as heat. David clears his throat, and for some reason, it is hard to ask. "What about you? You…um, do you…"

"Naw," Jack half laughs, mouth tightening as he swallows. "I look like a family man to you?"

David laughs too, buzzing from the drink, the whisky churning mulishly inside of him.

"Guess not."

They finish their drinks in silence, and Jack orders to more with a flick of his finger, barely glancing up; their new beers clink down silently, fully. David tries his hardest not to look at his old friend; the looking has become painful.

"So what are you doing out here?" Jack asks, voice still clipped at the edges. "Honestly?"

David frowns. He does not want to discuss this with Jack. He does not want to reveal the wounds, the inadequacies.

"A story," he says shortly. "Two year run and all. Unprecedented."

"Whoop-ee," Jack grunts, and David almost smiles. He feels exactly the same way. "What's your angle, Mr. Journalist?"

"No angle," David shrugs. "Except...well, no one wants me to talk to the workers. You, uh…" his eyes graze Jack's jaw. "You know why that is?"

Jack snorts. "Probably 'cuz you're a dirty socialist, ain't you?" David's eyebrows shoot up at the old jab, but Jack is rolling his eyes. "Lissen, David, I knew you was a reporter. We get the papers out here too, from New York sometimes. I read 'em if…well, if I ain't got nothin' else to do, sometimes I read 'em. For old time's sake. I seen your name in 'em."

"You saw my name?" David's insides curl. Jack is looking away again, and there is an edge of shame to it, an edge of expectancy. David fills his mouth with beer, drowns his tongue. When he emerges, it is hard to speak. "Jack, why didn't you look me up? Why didn't you write me or something?"

"Why?" Jack's fingers on the stein are white, unpleasant. "Why should I write you?"

"You just left," David says, and it is like something bursts inside him, something ugly. "You just left, and you didn't even say goodbye or where you were going or…or anything."

"So what?" Jack mumbles uncomfortably. "You ain't my mother, David. We didn't even really know one another. We just worked together."

"We knew one another!" David protests, his voice childishly high. "You had dinner with my family!"

"Food is food, I had dinner wherever I could get it."

"We worked together on the strike, we sprang Crutchy from jail…" the names are coming back, arriving in alarming regularity, the faces. "I sprang you from jail!" The ghost hands on his chest, the running, the alley. David's heart catches. "I risked a lot."

"Yeah, well, I never asked you. I didn't even want you to, remember?"

"You saved me," David protests, his face heating immediately. "You helped out! In that fight, remember? With the Delanceys? And my sister…"

"Jesus, David, what do you want?" Jack asks, looking him in the eye, exhausted. "You want me to apologize? To write you every month, let you know how things are goin' in Santa Fe, at the fuckin' rig? Let you know if I'm eatin' well and when I'm going to settle down?"

"I just wanted…" David pauses, feeling his blood coursing, draining. "I don't know. To still know you."

"Well congratulations," Jack says, voice dead. "You do. You want another beer or what?"

David sees, with a slight jolt, that his mug is almost empty. He tightens his throat and drains the rest, feeling his stomach lurch.

"Don't gimme that face," Jack rolls his eyes, signaling with his fingers again. "You look like you're fuckin' seventeen again."

"What are you talking about?"

"That face," Jack says, and even though his eyes are tired, he is smiling slightly. "Jesus, Davey, I can't look at you without seeing you as a fuckin' kid, you know that?"

David leans back in his chair, restless. He knows the look; sulky, petulant. The same look that Jack himself must have elicited from him, must have drawn out of him time and time again. Years ago. When they were young.

"Fair enough," he grumbles. "I can't look at you without seeing you as a kid too."

"'At's alright, then," Jack says, voice lighter. He can sense the wound, is easing around it with the skill of an old liar. "Better than looking at my ugly mug now, hey?"

"You're not ugly," David mumbles, and realizes quite suddenly, as Toby delivers another round, that he and Jack are going to get drunk. "Graves is ugly."

Jack laughs, what sounds like a real laugh. "Ain't that the truth. Imagine having to look at that ugly bastard every day."

"I can't," David says, giving Jack a reluctant grin. And then, impulsively; "Why do you?" The question is abruptly personal, but David is not going to reign himself in anymore. "I mean, I know this isn't what you wanted."

"You don't know what I wanted," Jack says quickly, smile gone.

"But…I mean, Jack. You could work anywhere."

Jack picks up his mug, puts it down. David sees his fingernails; they are dark with grime, slick with oil residue. In the dark of the evening, it looks like ink stains.

"No I can't, David," he says.

-

Jack has three more beers, David has two, feeling his nerve endings fuzz over, slip away. He watches Jack speak, his terse sentences gradually blooming out, taking on scope and shape. He takes note of his friend, of what he is outlined in sharp contrast to what he used to be; the old boisterousness is there, the old cocky grin that emerges every once in a while, surfacing, as though through stratified layers. David can see the Jack he once new appearing, withdrawing, catching him at odd angles.

"Still can't believe you're here," Jack mumbles, shaking his head. He laughs briefly, a bark. "Strange, pretty fuckin' strange. You take the train, or what?"

David drinks, and thinks weirdly of the serving girl, with her lamp-green eyes and her pretty hands. He thinks of the bachelors in the dining car, and his dreams of the city.

"Where are you sleeping?" He asks, replacing the mug neatly in its well-worn stain.

"Boardin' house, just down the street," Jack shrugs. "Only once a week though, when I ain't out by the rig. They got special deals for oil men, they know there's a load of us comin' into town every now and again."

"You like it?"

"S'not bad. Hell for a love life though," he adds, looking up with a grin. David's stomach goes warm. "Shore can't take a girl back to the barracks out there, and the boarding house…well. The women out here is alright," He adds, watching David almost carefully. "Not as good as back in…y'know, the city an' all."

"Maybe there's just less," David offers. His tongue feels sluggish, he does not want to talk about this. Jack is wearing the old grin, casual as a well-worn shirt, the kind he would use to tease David, to taunt him, to slowly draw him out.

"So what is it with you?" He asked, taking another pull of his mug. "So you ain't married. Okay. You got a girl you seein' or what?"

"Not…not right now," David mumbles, feeling this conversation drift into waters generally reserved for his mother, her ancient disappointments.

"Why not? You're young, you ain't..." he clears his throat. "You ain't bad lookin', y'know. You ain't a gimp or anything. You got a decent job."

"It's not decent," David cuts in, feeling his stomach twitch. "I don't get paid too well."

"Don't gimme that, reporters get paid good money."

"Yeah, well, I don't," David says firmly, raising his mug, knocking back another mouthful. It is the first time he has articulated this, and he thinks of his co-workers well-shod backs, their hands, always in their pockets. He can't even taste the drink anymore, his tongue is numbed, his face heated. Jack is observing him shrewdly, and after a moment he gives a half smile, breathing out.

"I know," He says, wrinkling his nose and taking a swig of his own drink. "Jacobs, right? Shit, that makes sense. Think I don't know? My pop was Irish, try gettin' a good payin' job when you're Irish in the city." There is a pause, and David studies his half-emptied beer. Jack breathes out hard through his nose. "It ain't your fault, David. These bastards up top, y'know?"

David looks up and gives a smile, a small, tight one that does not betray how his heart is pounding in his mouth. He is ashamed. He is happy. He feels the way he used to feel when Jack would turn him inside out with a stare. He looks away, jaw working, turning the mug around and around.

"I know," he says.

"So what about this story, then?" Jack asks with purposeful casualness, raising his eyebrows. "Gonna be a good one?"

"Maybe," David says, frowning as he thinks of the article back at his hotel, hollow and half-hearted. And then, suddenly: "You wanna interview, Jack?"

"Me?" Jack's eyes spark briefly before going blank, suddenly, like a shade rolling shut. All of a sudden he is not there, he is somewhere else, and David is speaking to a stranger. "Naw," Jack says, his lower lip pushing up. "Don't think so."

"Come on!" David presses, warming. "You got the day off tomorrow, you got something else to do?"

"Whaddaya wanna interview me for?" Jack asks, voice edging on a whine. "Give it a rest, David."

"I wanna interview you because no one else wants me to," David says, slurring slightly on the consonants, tripping. "You know why I'm not catching a train tomorrow? You know why I'm getting two extra days – _free, _Jack, _free days_ – to see the sights? You know why that is? 'Cuz I as good as promised Stephenson I'd keep in line and not go digging for dirt. Now you think I wouldn't guess that something's going on?"

"Nothing's going on," Jack rolls his eyes. "You a reporter or a goddamn Pinkerton man?"

"Come on," David grins, wheedling. "No tough questions, I promise. Lissen, I'll even buy you lunch. Tomorrow I'll buy you lunch and we can have an interview."

"No interview," Jack says firmly, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a worn pack of cigarettes. They are a different brand from what he smoked in New York City, and David does not know how he remembers this. "You wanna pay for this or what?" He adds, glancing up at David and motioning to their empty glasses with his smoke. His face is closed again, betraying nothing.

David's mouth wrinkles into a frown, and he sighs, digging into his pocket. As he procures a handful of sweaty dollar bills, Jack hangs the cigarette from his bottom lip and pushes his chair back.

"I like smokin' outside," he says briefly, slightly embarrassed. "Under…y'know, under the sky an' all. I'll walk you back to your hotel."

"Thanks," David says, his voice dead. He watches as Jack stands and leaves; after all this time, he feels like he knows his friend's back intimately, and what it looks like leaving.

-

When David comes out Jack is lighting his cigarette against the side of the building, hands cupped firmly around the flame, which flickers in the mild, cool breeze. The sight leaves him oddly mournful.

"Where you stayin'?" Jack asks, without looking at him.

"Hotel New Mexico," David says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. On his feet, he realizes how drunk he is and tries to reign in his body, his errant bones. Jack takes a drag and glances back at his friend, blowing smoke out his nose.

"That's nice," he says. "View of the square an' everythin'?"

"Yeah, third floor," David replies.

"Nice," Jack repeats, breathing out. David slides a sideways look at his old friend; Jack is looking up. In the darkness David can make out the thin stalk of his throat, the aching plainness of his chin, his profile. Jack's eyes reflect the stars, gleaming.

"Nice out here," David murmurs, looking down. "Not just…um, outside. Y'know. Out West." Jack clears his throat, coughs, takes another drag of his cigarette.

"I like it," he says briefly. "David, I ain't doin' this interview with you. Not 'cuz I don't like you or I don't respect you or nothin', but just 'cuz I could get into a lot of trouble too." He blows smoke out in a long stream and David catches it's scent, it's heat. "Maybe it's alright for you to go around, sneaking all this stuff, 'cuz in the end all you get is one less day in Santa Fe. I could lose my job."

"You think I'd print your name?" David asks incredulously, almost tripping over his own feet. "You think I'd put your picture in the paper or something? I'm not an idiot, Jack, I'm not…I'm not…"

"Like Denton?" Jack snorts.

"Don't," David says shortly, stung. "If…look, if you were to do the interview you'd be anonymous, or...I don't know, I could put you in under Jack Kelly, how 'bout that?"

"That's even worse," Jack grumbles. "Anyhow, you think it's that easy? You think you could just publish that and they wouldn't come lookin' for the guy who talked?" He breathes out hard through his nose and throws his cigarette down; it glows, half smoked. "It's so stupid, y'know," he bursts. "You come out here thinkin' everything is gonna be different. Like a new country or…I don't know, a new world or somethin'. And everything is just the god damn same. New York City ain't that far away."

"What are you talking about?" David asks, brows furrowed. Jack shakes his head.

"Forget it, David. I ain't doin' the interview."

"Then lunch, at least," David says, unwilling to listen to himself, unwilling to hear himself beg. "Jack, come on. What am I going to do tomorrow?"

"Whatever you told Stevens," Jack says dismissively. "See the sights."

"I don't want to see the sights! I didn't stay here for the goddamn sights."

"So what are you staying for then? I didn't ask you to come out here, David, I…" Jack hitches one shoulder uncomfortably. "I din'even want you to come out here. We'd both be a lot happier if you had just stayed in New York."

"It's…it's my job."

"This ain't your job," Jack says darkly. David breathes out, saying nothing, turning his eyes away. Jack snorts, digging into his pockets again and pulling out the pack, his fingers fumbling slightly. They fall into silence, traipsing down Doheny road, listening to their footsteps echo off the wooden esplanade in the empty street. The moon, larger than David remembers, hangs low in the sky, highlighting his paleness, his thinness, the parameters of his lonely body. By the time Jack is done his cigarette, they are at the hotel.

David has been chewing the words in his mouth, and he speaks them now, turning his back on his room and facing Jack. His friend is washed by moonlight, paled.

"Look," he says. "I won't buy you lunch. But at least come have a drink with me again? Tomorrow night?"

"Why?" Jack murmurs, uncomfortable, squeezing the butt of his smoke. "Thought we was done talkin'."

"I haven't seen you in seven years, Jack," David says, his voice slurring, stumbling. "And after this, I won't see you again at all. Promise. Just one more drink, at Joe's. For old time's sake."

Jack sighs, flicking his cigarette away, and shoving his hands hard in his pockets. He looks up, and any trace of David's old friend is gone, in hiding.

"Don't count on it," he says. "Look, it's been real nice seein' you an everything David, but I don't think I'll be around…y'know, tomorrow night. Gotta wake up early an' everything." He holds out a rough hand, looking away, as though he does not want to see. David looks down; Jack's hand, seven years older, clean, spitless, as firm as the end of a sentence. Without thinking, he reaches out and takes it in his own. It fits neatly; David feels the warm knock of his palm, the slim taper of his clever fingers. He feels Jack's thumb, clasping briefly over his.

"Good seeing you, Jack," he says, voice low.

"You too, David," his friend replies by rote, and if there's anything else to it, David can't tell. Jack withdraws his hand and steps away, nods, turns. David feels as though he has slipped up, as though he has lost, and cannot account for either feeling as Jack walks across the square, abruptly turns a corner, and disappears from view.

* * *

Cheers to my betas.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

When David wakes up, he is alone.

His head hurts, but not in any way that he considers serious. He resigns himself to business; a brief glance over the article, a rearranging of words. He edits, knocking his word count down to what was actually assigned, and not just what he wants it to be. Were it not for the light, were it not for the strange, hollow ache in his ribs that he chooses not to identify, he could be back in New York, back in his flat, simply and wholly alone, as usual. He wishes for Sarah, bearing coffee beans, stale bread. He wishes for Les, his mother, his father, wishes even for Bryan with his scotch and tricks of the trade, his pervasive voice. He does not know what he wishes for.

"Dammit," he mutters to himself, throwing his pencil down. He should not be this upset.

He washes briefly, vigorously, avoiding his image in the mirror, and when high noon passes he finally leaves his room, sweating. The air is muted, wet, as though holding its breath. At the root of the horizon, he sees clouds. He half expects to see Jack turning the corner, idling in an alley, glaring at him from across the square but of course, his old friend is no where to be seen.

_Hiding_, David thinks wryly to himself, jamming his hands in his pockets. Still, he cannot help but look, can't help but spare a second glance to every young face, every distinctive profile. But otherwise, he makes good on his promise to Stevens; he sees. He wanders down every crooked street he can find, peering in doorways, mapping out alleyways, studying the Spanish words painted onto the sides of buildings and picking out the Latin prefixes and declensions. He ducks into a small shop, hung with Native blankets, and buys a pen-wipe for his father, a handkerchief for his mother, a bottle of perfume for Sarah and a small drawstring pouch for Les, woven brilliantly in blues and reds, with a leather thong long enough to wear it under a shirt. The woman, bloated and sheenless in the close, wet heat, takes his money with a frown and wraps each item in cheap looking cloth, humming to herself. David wipes his forehead, wishes he was somewhere else. When he leaves, he avoids Doheny road.

The locals begin to emerge as the afternoon recedes, blooming in heat. David wanders indiscriminately, eyeing soda shops, saloons, theaters. He sees the Palace of Governors, he sees the markets, he sees the children, sun-browned and bird-like, playing in the dust. He wanders down a narrow street where the windows are shaded, and the bodies withdraw to doorways, curled and leaning. Boys, all of them, dark skinned and wiry, their eyes luminescent. Conversations, carried on in sharp twists of Spanish, go quiet as he approaches; he knows why, it is his white skin, it is the way he is wearing his nerves on the outside. It is the way he sweats. He shoves his hands in his pockets hard, touching his wallet, his pen, feeling the twinge of a New Yorker's native suspicion, and when one of the boys calls to him – "Sientes solo?" in the keening voice of a wily stray, "papi chulo?" – he only glances up for a moment, startled, and keeps walking. Their laughter rings after him down the rotting esplanades. Inexplicably, he is furious.

_I want to go home. _This is all he can think, blinded by sunlight. There is shame in this somehow, the shame of returning empty handed, but what did he think he was going to bring back? He doesn't understand Jack. The world is not small, and New York is years away. _Home. _To where his mother presides over Les at the dinner table and his father slowly and methodically eats, to where his sister sleeps in the same bed she has always slept in, to where their voices and eyes and expectations will be on his shoulders once more. To where Denton lives. To where Denton writes and smokes and drinks. To where they will carefully circle around one another in Newspaper row, expecting bullets, walking their chosen routes and keeping their eyes to the corners…

"Jacobs!"

He jumps, hand still in his pocket. For a moment, the solid body before him is so suffused in light it is almost unrecognizable. But the stranger smiles and David abruptly knows him.

"Fitz!" He says, genuinely surprised. He is holding out a broad hand, and it takes David a moment, but when he clasps his palm to the older man's, it is cool and dry as glass.

"Young Jacobs," Fitz presses his shoulder for good measure, grinning like he will never stop. "I've been meaning to get a word with you since I saw you at old Stevens' soiree last night."

"You were there?" David's thoughts feel like a train, shunting. Fitz looks even wilier in the open air, more jocular. Behind him, David can still see the clouds. "What…what are you doing in Santa Fe?"

"Imagine I'm here for the same reason you are," Fitz lets go of his hand, sliding his own into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. "Not reporting, of course. Damned if I'm a man of letters." David nods, unsure of what he is consenting to. "But the gala, of course. The well, son. Two year run. Magnificent. Stevens is an old friend and I thought it politic to come out." David nods again, but Fitz is examining the mouth of the lane over his shoulder. "Burro Alley, David! My, my, my. You certainly cut to the chase, don't you?"

"Excuse me?" David looks over his shoulder, the back of his neck pricking. Fitz, away from the nocturnal poker hands and gins, puts him off too easily, as though he is reaching out and tipping him. He roars, showing the roof of his mouth, the foxish set of his teeth, and David feels like the joke.

"Don't look so startled, son, I'm just pulling your leg," He chuckles, slapping David's shoulder again. "Come on, let's go for a drink. Heat's enough to strangle a man in this damned city."

"Why didn't you say on the train?" David asks.

"What's that?"

"The train. You knew we'd both be here, I would have…I would have called on you," David lies lamely. "I mean, you knew I was working for the paper, but…"

"Ah. Nothing," Fitz says solemnly. "Is more detrimental to a good bottle of gin and good company than talk about business. My apologies, Jacobs, you must be hellish lonely out here, I should have looked you up. It's just this damned heat, you know, I never leave my room before four-o-clock, if I don't have to. The morning finds me in my bed, but by night I'm roaming the streets! What about that drink, what do you say?"

"I…" David feels exhausted. "Sorry, sir…um, Fitz. Sorry, Fitz, I don't mean to be rude, but I've been out all day and I think…"

"You want to get some work in before drinks at Stevens' tonight, of course, of course," Fitz concedes. "He told me you'd be making an appearance. Chance for you to show off those sterling poker skills, eh? Alright, young Jacobs, off you go."

This is something so alike to what Stevens would say that David wants to choke. He manages a tight nod, and moves to pass the older man, but all of a sudden, Fitz is touching him. His fingers are elegant, for a man, gently pressing at the sleeve of David's shirt. David looks up and sees Fitz's smile up close and thinks of traps, set to spring.

"Make sure you rest up well, son," is what he says. "Had a late night last night on Doheny Road?"

David's brow tightens. "What?"

"I happened to be out on a stroll after the gala," Fitz says. "Saw you had a drinking companion out of Joe's." David doesn't know why, but he feels dizzy. He feels the heat. He feels like the ground may swallow, like a mouth.

"A friend," David manages. "I was meeting a friend."

"Fantastic," Fitz lets go of his arm. David feels his own blood, coursing and draining. "Good to have friends in the city. Word to the wise, though, the drinking holes along Doheny are absolutely savage, as you well know by now. Best to stick to the Plaza."

"Yeah," David says.

"I'll see you tonight, son,"

"Tonight," David repeats dumbly, and turns around. Walking feels strange, he concentrates on his feet, concentrates on the broad, warm planks of wood beneath him. The plaza is close, and he needs to leave. He does not want Fitz to look at him.

* * *

_He and Jack are walking past the Palace of Governors, and there is no one else there. But it can't be the Palace, because Jack is a man and David is only seventeen, so there has been a mistake. He looks around for his family, but they are nowhere._

_Jack is laughing at something, and David is not. Perhaps the joke isn't even funny. Perhaps it's about him. He doesn't like being this young, he feels annoyed, he feels tautened like a rope pulled on. Jack's mouth his open, his teeth are white and big. He puts his hands on David and David sees that they are not Jack's hands, because they are stained with ink, and the third finger on the right hand is blistered the way David's finger is – it comes from holding onto a pen for too long. _

_They turn the corner and it is not Burro alley anymore. It is New York City. It is the city where David was born, and where Jack lived, though he will not die there. It is the alley, it is two blocks from the Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, which David knows nothing about. _

_Jack is asking something about David's family, but when he looks at him, Jack is turning into someone else.

* * *

_

David wakes up choking.

He lays his hands on his chest and feels for a heartbeat, willing his body to settle, to quiet, as though it is an animal. His breath surges inside him, and it takes a moment to shake off whatever it is that clings to him. _Just get out of here. Go._ He looks at the clock. It is nine. The sky outside is the color of flesh, inside out, glowing and wet. The sun is setting behind the mountains and David's hands, slick against his chest, catch the light. His best suit is laying on the chair by the window, empty and expectant, the smell of Joe's brushed and pressed from its folds. He washed before his nap, but he is sweating again, he can feel the slide of it on his back, his hands. His body buzzes, he licks his lips, uncertain of what he wants.

He swears. He sits up. He swings his legs to the floor and feels the rough terrain of hotel carpet. He is miserable.

Cool water on the back of his neck, his face, to cut the close heat that, for once, is familiar to him. It is the heat of New York's summers, before the storm comes. In his ribs is that same, unidentifiable ache, like a fresh punch, like a forgotten bullet. He swears again, leaning against the washing stand. The water drips from his chin, his mouth, and pools along the porcelain. He is still thinking of the dream, and it makes some secret nerve under his stomach buzz. He thinks of Jack's hands on his shoulders, his chest. He stops thinking.

He will dry his skin, he will brush his hair, and he will put the suit on and go to Stevens' for drinks. He will smile, he will shake hands with Fitz, and he will say words that he does not mean. He used to be good with his words, once, he could be good again. He looks up into the mirror. His eyes shine back at him, blue, so unlike the rest of his family. "Eyes like silver dollars," his father used to say when David was just a child, adding with pride "just like an American." Meaning, David now knows, not like a Jew.

He will go for drinks. He will forget about Jack. He will forget about the story, because there is no story. He will forget about the summer of 1899, because why should he remember it?

This resolve lasts until he steps out of the hotel, and sees the car waiting for him. He crosses the esplanade, steps into the street. He opens the door. When he gets in and speaks to the driver, it is like listening to a different person.

"Change of plans," he hears himself say. He closes the door. He says, "Doheny road, please."

* * *

_He only saw Bryan Denton once after November of 1903. It was a few years later, because he had spent the first night in his new apartment, exhilarated and unhappy and alone. He thought such acquisitions would make him a man, but he just felt more and more of a child, or like something stripped of its armor, its skin, leaving the flesh vulnerable. He was walking a new route to work, thinking about his old bed and how empty it had looked, stripped of his sheets, when he saw him. Buying a coffee in a paper cup at a newspaper stand, counting change out of his pocket, smiling distractedly at something said to him by the woman at his side. A woman – not unremarkable, with kind eyes and her hair the same color of city sparrows, her plain mouth unpainted. David stopped, could not move. Bryan was unexceptional in his brown suit, in his sensible shoes, but to David he was so big he took up the whole street. He was shining.

* * *

_

When David steps out of the car, Jack is waiting.

David is not smiling, not speaking, just looking. Looking at Jack, who he did not expect to be here, leaning up against the wall of Joe's and smoking, nervously. He sees David get out of the car and hunches his shoulders up, expecting wounds. He is wearing a different shirt today, it cuts close around the shoulders, makes him seem somehow smaller.

"_Gracias_," David tells the driver, and he closes the door. Jack is moving towards him with loping, nervous steps. He reaches out and lightly smacks the back of David's neck in greeting, glancing back towards the bar, up and down the street. A nerve in David's shoulder jumps, buzzes.

"Not here," Jack says, withdrawing, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Come on."

"You came," David says, falling into step with his old friend.

"Yeah, I came," Jack says, shortly.

"Where we going?"

"Somewhere there's less people to listen in," Jack says, glancing at David. "Where's your notebook?"

"I…" David grins, can't help himself. "I didn't bring it."

"Some reporter you are," Jack snorts. "Come on."

They walk in silence, David struggling to match his friend's strides. His heart is knocking at the root of his tongue, but he is still smiling, he aches with it. He knows Jack is excited, can tell by the way he walks, quick and strident, something boyish to the eyes. He sees the flashes of the young man under older flesh, still with something of the swaggering cowboy to his walk. David thinks of the bandanna, the rope. He thinks of running from the adults. Jack takes them farther from Doheny road, where the streets run as narrow as creeks, where the gaping windows are nailed up with rough planks and strung with graying burlap.

"This way," Jack says, letting his cigarette drop and immediately searching for a new one. "Smoke?"

"No," David says, surprised.

"Forgot," Jack puts the pack back in his pocket and sends David an sudden, mean grin. "Don't steal, don't lie, don't smoke."

"They make me sick," David says defensively.

"You can do whatever you want," Jack says, withdrawing. "Few more minutes."

They are walking past the mouth of Burro alley. It is dark as a snake hole, and if it holds bodies, David cannot see them. A few red lights glow silently in the windows and throw sultry pink shadows, the color of something sick. Two boys linger outside the alley, stripped to the waist, their bodies tough and stringy as dried meat. They are sharing what looks like a cigarette, their hips have the dangerous jut of the hungry, the bored. David looks in their faces, sees the eyes of boys.

"Cowboy," one of them mutters to the other, and then chokes out a hoarse laugh. David looks up at Jack, who stares grimly forward, as though nothing is happening. "Hey!" One of the boys calls. "Tu novio nuevo, eh?"

"Come on," Jack says again. David cannot help but look. The second boy is smooth and girlish, he is wearing lipstick. When they laugh, they sound like wolves.

Jack takes them down an adjacent lane, where a few signs still sit dusty in windows, plying trades. He jerks his head and they enter a bar three doors in – just as shabby as Joe's but near empty, the blades of the fans above beating out the only sounds.

"Sit," Jack tells David, and David is surprised to see his friend's face is flushed. "I'll get us drinks. You payin' again?"

"I guess I have to," David says wryly, raising one eyebrow and digging a few bills from his pocket. Jack takes them absently, missing the barb.

"Some paper too," He says, running a hand along the back of his head. In the dim light he is thinner looking, David sees the jut of his elbow, the strong, close lines of him. "Can't believe it."

"Can't believe what?" David asks, but Jack is already loping towards the bartender. David sighs, and chooses a table near the back under a lamp nailed crookedly to the wall, burning out the last of its wick. He hears Jack talking to the barman, and is surprised to hear a few Spanish words in the mouth of his old friend, a twist of local dialect. He sits, taking a stub of pencil from his pocket, rolling it onto the tabletop.

"Here," Jack says when he comes back, banging the beer in front of his friend with no ceremony, followed by three pieces of paper, crumpled. David pulls the drink towards him, watch as Jack fishes his third cigarette out from the pack and digs for matches.

"So?" Jack mumbles through the filter as David takes a pull of the ale. The glass sweats, condensation dampening the rim.

"So what?" David replies, still grinning.

"What you gonna ask me, wise guy?" Jack retorts mulishly. The flame catches, flares, David watches the shadows surge and wane across his friend's face.

"That boy called you Cowboy, he knows you?" David asks. Jack shoots him the meanest look he can muster.

"Who?"

"That boy outside Burro Alley."

"Yeah, what about it?" Jack answers, blowing out smoke. "What's that got to do with anythin'?"

"It's just that's what they called you back in the city…"

"It's a god damn nickname, David," Jack says, weirdly tense. "Can we quit talkin' about the city? I don't' like talkin' about it, I ain't even supposed to be here right now."

"Then why did you come?" David presses.

"Why do you fuckin' think?" Jack snaps, cutting his eyes to David's. "You want the god damn interview or not?"

"Alright," David says lightly, raising his eyebrows. He realizes he is trying not to smile. He licks the tip of his pencil and slides the paper closer, writing out the date in firm, neat capitals. He begins to write 'Jack Kelly', but his friend tugs at the paper, frowning.

"Don't do that," he says, tapping at the name with a fingertip. David sees the beginning of a tobacco stain around the nail. "You gotta write somethin' down like that? Can't you just put anonymous or somethin'?"

"These are just my notes, Jack,"

"An' I don't want that god damn name on them," Jack insists, petulant. "Cross it out, or I ain't doin' nothing for you."

"Alright, alright," David sighs, scraping the pencil hard over the first few letters. "Anonymous?"

"Probably best," Jack concedes, leaning back slightly in his chair, watching David write. "I still don't talk too good," he says after a moment, gruffly. "I mean…last reporter I talked to was Denton." David flushes slightly at the name, presses a full stop into the paper.

"It's alright," he says, looking up. "Just answer me in your own words."

Jack nods, pushes his lower lip out, and after a moment reaches for his stein. David waits until he has taken a healthy pull, and then begins to speak.

"So no one on this company wants me talking to deckhands," he says, watching Jack's face. His mouth, his eyes. "You said yourself that I'm not supposed to be talking to you. Why's that?"

Jack shrugs, eyes fixed on the table. "Prolly the same reason you mighta guessed. Guys like Stevens, they don't want the word gettin' out that maybe they're workers is unhappy. Could be bad for business."

"Are you unhappy?" David asks. Jack raises his eyes, regards David from under furrowed brows.

"I'm happy as a fuckin' clam, David."

"You look it," David replies just as sharply, determined not to lose his footing this time. He takes another pull off his beer, licks his lips. "Why are you unhappy at the rig?"

Jack shrugs again, but this time it's uncomfortable, as though he is trying to shake someone's touch.

"Usual stuff," he says. "Pay is shit, hours is too long, it's…" he stops, glances behind him, and then fixes his eyes hard on his hands, laying like dead things on the tabletop. His skin is calloused, roughened, and for the first time, David notices the scar on the back of his wrist, faded but there, shining. "It's hell out there."

"Out where?" David presses. He begins to write, fluidly, his hand ticking into rhythm.

"Out on the desert like that," Jack says. His voice is dropping now, low and rough. "On the rig. Guys like me, deckhands and all, we're dime a dozen. No know-how, you see? All we're good for is the grunt work an' getting the coffee for the likes of Graves."

"So why do you do it?" David asks, his pencil never ceasing to move. "There's other jobs out there, probably for better pay if that's what you're worried about."

"That's the thing," Jack says, raising his eyebrows. "Ain't so easy gettin' those good jobs with good pay."

"No education?" David suggests. Jack looks at him, his eyes calculating.

"Criminal records," he says quietly. David's pencil slips, but only for a second. He gives Jack a moment to drink while he catches up. His mind, the mind of a journalist, begins slowly to buzz.

"Criminal records," he repeats, forgetting his beer, forgetting everything but the man and paper before him. "So what are we talking here? Theft? Assault?"

"Sometimes," Jack says, his voices still quiet. "Sometimes worse."

"How much worse?" David asks, looking up. Jack shrugs.

"Murder."

David breathes out through his nose. He writes "criminal". He writes "murder". His heart bangs against the walls of his body.

"So what are you doing working for Stevens?" David asks. "You haven't…I mean, you don't…"

Jack snorts, tilts his chair back on two legs. "You don't gotta be frightened, David. I ain't done nothin'. Just most men would rather employ a killer who'll work than some dumb kid with a reputation for being a socialist who might not."

"You mean…" David pauses, fingers slowing. Jack is grinning, but it's an old smile, dredged up for show.

"Try explainin' how you almost brought down the World when you were seventeen to some a' these rich bastards. Shoulda figured it," he says, almost to himself. "I thought Santa Fe would be a new start an' all, but that sort of thing follows you. They get the papers from New York, see."

"Even across the country," David is saying dumbly. He should have known it himself. Jack shrugs again, and kills the cigarette butt against the tabletop, no ashtray in sight. "Jack, that was so long ago."

"Don't matter," Jack says, making his voice light. "Swear to god, they must have a list or somethin', of guys like me. Things is getting tighter, everyone here's lookin' for papers, certificates and stuff, I got Francis Sullivan written all over me. Stevens is the only one that don't require papers. So I work for Stevens."

David opens his mouth to say something, thinks the better of it. Licks the tip of his pencil instead. Jack watches him as he adds a few more qualifying words to his transcript, arms crossed, breathing through his nose.

"How much do you get paid?" He asks. Jack shifts his body in his seat, looking uncomfortable.

"Ten cents to the hour," he mumbles. David nearly drops his pencil.

"Jack!" he says, looking up. "That's…that's well below half of what you were making selling papers as a kid! Hell, that's well below half of what _I_ was making."

"You think I don't know it?" Jack snaps, hunching his shoulders. "I ain't workin' this job for the pay, I _told_ you that. I don't like talkin' about money, alright? Dammit."

"Do…" David stumbles, clears his throat. "Do all the deck hands get paid that little?"

"'Cross the board," Jack replies, working his thumbnail into a ridge on the table. David clears his throat again and writes the figure down, trying not to think of how he was complaining of low wages to Jack only the night before. He feels heat crawling up his the back of his neck. Leaving Jack alone to his drink, he reads over the notes he has taken.

"So. Stevens employs criminals to work long hours for practically nothing," David says after a moment, trying to check the rising tide of his voice. "Keeps his costs down, I imagine. And I guess he throws in that bonus pay at the end of the run as a public sop, then?"

"A what?" Jack furrows his brows, not looking up.

"A show," David corrects. "To impress his backers. Jack, we could really run with this, you know."

"That ain't all," Jack says, so quiet that David, at the edge of his chair, almost misses it.

"What's not all?" He asks after a moment. Jack shrugs again, chewing hard at the inside of his lip. David looks at his friend, his wrists, his shoulders, strung tight. "Jack?"

Jack looks over his shoulder again, and David can see a muscle in his face twitch, can see the pulse in his neck swelling and draining, quick, nervous. He turns back to David and leans on the table. David, as though dreaming, leans in too. He is close enough to hear Jack breathing but when his old friend speaks it sounds as though his voice is coming from miles away.

"Guys get killed out on the rig," is what Jack says. David opens his mouth, closes it again. He feels a strange coolness at the ends of his fingertips.

"Killed," he repeats. The word is sharp as metal on his tongue. "What do you mean? How…how do they get killed?"

"Accidents," Jack says darkly. "Deckhands look after malfunctions, see, so we're the ones that gotta get in close when anyone else would have the sense to get the hell away. I seen guys get crushed under equipment, ripped up by machines, seen 'um get trapped under deck in the well and an' everything. That shit gets in your eyes you go blind, then you drown down there."

David's mouth is dry. He leans back and reaches for his beer, can barely taste it. _Then you drown down there. _He thinks of the bodies he saw on the rig out on the skin of the desert, of taut muscle and thin bones. He thought of the man stepping off the deck, craning his head from side to side, loosening the muscles in an exposed, shining throat. _Then you drown._

"There's compensation though, right?" David is asking, his voice high and tight as wire. "Their…their families and everything?"

"No families, no compensation," Jack shrugs, his eyes never leaving David's face.

"But there's safety measures to…I mean, this sort of thing doesn't happen…"

"Cheaper without it," Jack says quietly. "That sorta thing takes training, Stevens don't wanna spend the time or the money. Besides, guys like me is easy to make disappear."

David swallows dryly. He is thinking of Jack's body, thinking of the arms and shoulders he would know anywhere, that he _did _know anywhere, thinking of the quicksilver grin of a cocksure boy.

"Sometimes it ain't even the job," Jack is saying, his voice is distant and tinny, like a broadcast from a thousand miles away. "These guys they hire ain't shrinkin' violets, y'know? Brawls happen, someone's sure to be pulling out a pipe, a knife if he can get his hands on one. One less guy shows up in the mornin' and Graves turns a blind eye."

"This is sick," David says. He looks down at the paper. The last words he wrote stare up at him, plain and neat: ten cents an hour. "That's murder, Jack."

"What you get when you hire murderers," Jack says lightly, a corner of his mouth tightening.

"It's not a joke!" David explodes, barely managing to not yell. Jack glances around the bar, cuts him with a look.

"Of course it ain't, keep your voice down."

But David is pushing his beer away, he is standing, he is dizzily reaching for his notes and crumpling them into his pocket. He can hear, just vaguely, the whirring fan above his head, can hear the clink of glass behind the bar. He can feel his legs, knows that he is putting one foot before the other, knows that he is moving. He hears the scrape of Jack's chair, hears him breathing hard through his nose.

"David," Jack is saying, but David walks out.

* * *

Outside, it is hard to breathe. The air smells thick and dull, it smells like sweat and hair and wood. The bellies of the clouds above him hang dark and low, blotting out the moon. David presses his palms to his face, feeling wetness, feeling heat.

_You drown down there._ Stevens and Fitz will be drinking by now, expensive scotches out of cut crystal glasses, surrounded by women, silk, and velvet. He thinks of the hands he has shaken, the many words he has said and has not meant. He thinks of Jack's body because he cannot stop thinking about it, he sees his friend crushed, bleeding, he sees him on the business end of a pipe, eyes going out like lights switched off. The thought makes him choke.

There is no sound from inside. Jack is finishing his beer, probably, shoulders hunched, back turned against those who might stare. David sucks in air, pulling open the top few buttons of his best shirt, feeling strangely like laughing. Walters should have known not to send him on a story like this. He wants to dig his fingers into flesh, he wants to bite, he wants to bury his fist in something soft and satisfying, like a fattened gut. He hears the scrape of Jack's chair, he hears his low voice murmuring a hurried _gracias_ to the bartender. He hears footsteps.

By the time Jack is beside him he has calmed down, palming the sweat from his forehead, breathing through his nose. His old friend regards him carefully, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lower lip. After a moment he procures his matches, lights his smoke, breathes in slow and easy.

"Alright," he says, and his voice is light. "Time to tell the truth, David, don't you think?" David just looks at him. His friend is leaning his back against the wall beside him, easing, like there is something inside him hurting. He does not look at David but up, exposing the throat. David will not look at it. He turns away. The sky is deep, it rumbles. "Why did you want that interview?"

"I'm going to write an article," David tells him steadily, staring straight ahead. "I'm going to put in everything you just told me and let the world know exactly what's going on here. I'm going to bring Stevens to his goddamn knees."

"Are you?" Jack asks, and there is something gentle about him as he breathes in smoke, blows it out. "They won't print it, Davey."

"I'll shop it around then," David says fiercely. "I don't care what happens to me or my job, people have to know!"

"They won't, though," Jack says, lowering his face, looking David straight on. "You're a Jew and I'm a washed up strike leader that can't even get a job in a grocery store. Plus I bet you anythin' that Stevens' got an old friend in every newspaper office that matters. He's that kind of man, you can smell it on him, for Christ's sake."

"I'll print it myself if I have to!"

"Oh yeah, you and Denton gonna break into that basement in Newspaper Row again?" Jack asks, voice sharp. "It ain't gonna happen, David, and you know that. You knew that before you even asked me a single question. So now, answer mine. Why did you want me to come out for an interview that means shit to both you an' me?"

"Come to New York City with me," David mumbles. He does not mean to say it and he does not know how the words escaped him, but they hang now, shining. Jack sighs, looking away.

"That's what I thought," he says.

"You can't stay here," David is saying, his words sure, quickening. "I'll buy you a ticket, you can catch the train back with me day after tomorrow. It's about four days to the city, one transfer. I got a place now, it's not big, but you can stay with me until you're back on your feet, and then…"

"Stay with you!" Jack interjects. He is laughing, and the laughter is sharp, like a bark, like a jab. "David, you hear what your sayin'?"

David slumps against the wall, feeling his chest deflate. Jack laughs again and it gets at him, sticks under his ribs like a knife.

"Lissen," Jack is saying, and he is smiling, but firm. "Thanks for coming out to find me an' all, but I ain't leavin' Santa Fe, 'cuz I don't wanna. I get what you're tryin' to do, but you ever stop to ask yourself why I ain't come back before? I _like_ it here, David. Better than the city. An' that's that."

"The rig…"

"The rig is the rig," Jack says, the smile gone. "Sure, it's no rodeo, but I…hell, I don't need no fucking rodeo. Now come on. Come in an' have another drink. I'll even pay, if you promise not to start yellin' again."

"I don't want a drink," David says, turning. Above him the sky snaps, it growls. He is pulsing, he is aching, he feels like fighting but does not know whom.

"For old time's sake," Jack says.

"I don't want one, Jack," David snaps, rougher than he means. Jack breathes out steadily, and stubs the cigarette out against the side of the building.

"Come on," he says, voice gentle. "At least finish your first one, that's just manners. We'll talk about somethin' else. Hell, we'll talk about the city if you like, I ain't forgotten."

"You could die," David says, and regrets the words immediately. He can't see his friend, but he can hear him breathe.

"I could, that," Jack says after a minute. "But everybody does."

* * *

Hello everyone. This beast will get finished, I promise.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

Jack leads David back into the bar, and they finish their beers in silence. David tries to calm the animal jumping against the inside of his chest, tries not to think about Jack's body, ripped open. He pays the tab.

Jack walks him back to the Hotel New Mexico, near finishing off the pack of cigarettes and saying nothing, only swearing once at the sight of a clock posted on the corner.

"Gonna be hell gettin' up for that bus tomorrow," he says.

"Don't, then," David retorts, hitching a shoulder. Jack does not look at him.

"I gotta, David, it's my job. Don't worry, ain't nothin' gonna happen to me."

David wants to argue, but Jack throws down his cigarette in a way that's as final as a period at the end of a sentence. They walk in silence for a moment, listening to the thickening of the sky.

"Ain't so bad," Jack is saying as a wind picks up, catching at the flaps of David's collar. "Truth be told if I weren't here with you I'd probably just be with some of the guys in Burro Alley, and that ain't no early night anyways."

"What's in Burro Alley?" David obliges dully.

"Natives. Girls mostly," Jack tells him, his grin choked off by a cough. There is a pause. "Some boys," he adds, like it doesn't matter, like it's the same thing. David can feel his old friend looking, appraising him, watching for a twitch of expression. David turns his blank face away, thinking suddenly of Sarah, and the way she looks when waiting. Thinks of what she would say to Jack now.

"That's nice."

"Sorry, David. Jesus," Jack rolls his eyes. "I'll quit talkin', alright?"

"You can do whatever you want," David shrugs. Jack frowns, and they take a left.

They hear the rain before they feel it, a wet spattering on wood and rooftops.

"Shit," Jack says, looking up at the sky with the squint of a cowboy. He lands a hand on the back of David's neck again, hauling him out of the street and under the awning of a grocery shop, just as the heavens open, just as the skies crack and burst. David feels something warm surging up his insides at this handling, and it is sad, and it is aching, it is as thick as the rain that is suddenly everywhere, loud and close as touch.

The heat breaks, bleeding sharp clean air. The rain is fearsome, lashing down in thick tongues, setting off the scent of molding wood, of damp furs and wools. David and Jack are soaked, despite trying to run from awning to awning, and Jack is shaking the water from his hair, laughing, as they duck under the Hotel New Mexico's walkway.

Jack whoops, grinning for the first time without hesitation, without craft. David looks at him, startled. He is soaked, the hair comes loose from his head and hangs over his forehead, streaming. When he smiles his canines glint, sharp.

"Ain't it somethin'," he says, grinning at David, smacking the back of his shoulder blade. His touch rings through David like a bell. "I ain't seen rain like this in a coon's age. Glad I ain't workin' tonight."

The plaza is light by a white flash, it turns the world pale bone, it makes David's heart twist. He can hear thunder ripping up the desert, and imagines the rig, miles away, slowly and steadily pumping, requiring bodies. He turns to Jack who is examining the damp packet in his pocket, is swiftly extracting his final smoke and hanging it off his grinning lip. David feels like if he were to reach out and touch his friend, his fingers would come up with nothing, like desert.

"Thanks for the interview," he says as lightly as he can, watching as Jack struggles with his wet matches. His friend shrugs, shaking a few drops of water from the book, picking at the one that looks the most dry. "You're right, it probably won't get printed."

"All's the better," Jack says after a moment, managing to kindle a flame, sucking hard on the smoke to make it light. "We'd both be out of a job."

"I guess," David shrugs. He runs his palms over his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, feeling rainwater run off his hair. Jack laughs, chokes, shakes his head.

"Power of the press, hey?" He jokes, but misses the mark. It feels like a slap. David does not smile. "Aw, Davey, lighten up." The nickname makes David's heart twist. He hasn't heard Jack say his name in seven years. Jack stretches, his chest swelling beneath his blouse. The thunder rolls up the desert again, bellowing.

"Well," Jack says slowly, sucking hard on the cigarette. He turns and looks at David, blows out smoke. "Guess I should be heading back now."

"Come up for a drink," David says. Jack does not wince, as though he knew the invitation was coming. His head dips, and he relights the cigarette, gone out in the dampness.

"It ain't smart," he says slowly.

"What, you mean we could get caught?"

Jack's laugh is humorless. "Yeah," he snorts. "That's what I mean. We could get caught. You have no idea what I'm talkin' about, do you Davey?"

"Yeah, well, you're as lucid as ever," David sighs. "What do you say? Whiskey's on Stevens', and..." he pauses, considering, "it may be our last one."

Jack laughs at this, hoarsely, but when he says "alright," in the voice of a child, he is not looking at David. He is looking at the Plaza, and David thinks suddenly of an animal, muted and alert, tensed to spring. But then he turns to David and offers up a perfunctory grin, his face barely moving. David reaches into his pocket for the key, and the two of them walk into the Hotel New Mexico in silence.

* * *

_The rally was that night, and the morning was dawning, fresh and cool as melon. Sarah's bed was empty and the window was open, it filled the room up with light until David, stripped to the waist and clean, was glowing. He could hear Les stomping around the kitchen, having just been told by Esther that he was not to be anywhere near Irving Hall that night._

"_It's not fair! David's going!" He was howling, his voice hooking in a whine._

_"David is an adult, he can do what he wants! You, on the other hand, are my baby and you listen to your mother, do you hear me? Les!"_

_"They need me there! I'm helping out!"_

"_Listen to this! A nine-year-old boy helping out! It's dangerous, you stay here."_

"_I'm near ten!"_

_David grinned, grabbed at the wooden comb at the edge of his bed. He heard a clattering on the fire escape, and in a second Sarah was there, glowing in white, her face flushed and happy._

"_Oh!" She exclaimed, her voice high and unusual. "Did you open the window? I was just on the roof, putting your good shirt out to dry so there will be time to iron it before tonight. It's your blue one, the one momma says brings out your eyes and all. I thought you might like it. Wearing it tonight, that is."_

_Her words tumbled over one another and she laughed self consciously, face brightening along the cheekbones. David only smiled at her as she spilled her thin legs into the room, smoothing back her hair. She walked past him, grinning at the floor, and David smelled laundry, skin, he smelled the sun in hair._

_He combed his own curls back, and stood in the stillness of his thoughts, lapping up the light like water. He could hear Les turning on Sarah, wailing in earnest. Heard his sister laughing, scolding, and sounding more like her mother than ever. He thought of the rally that night, thought of Jack and Irving hall, and warmth bloomed in his stomach, like something flooding._

_Another clatter, and Jack himself was suddenly outside his window, earlier than usual, hands hanging from the frame above him, grinning like a thief._

"_Davey!" he said, clambering in. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, his rope belt tied tight to his hips. With a laugh he aimed a punch at his friend's shoulder. David grinned, reaching out to shove him, but Jack got an arm over the back of his neck and nearly brought him to his knees. He was warm, David could feel it through his clothes, and the light bounced off him like a coin. "Get your damn shirt on, ya bum, I've been working all mornin'."_

"_Like hell you have," David shot back, but quieter so Esther wouldn't hear, wriggling out of his friend's grasp. Jack grinned and playfully knocked at the side of his head, feinting like a boxer. David could not stop smiling._

"_Sarah in?" He asked, sounding oddly careful. He was breathing hard. David nodded. "Oh yeah? She ain't at work yet?"_

* * *

David opens the door to his hotel room and Jack follows him in. It is hot, it is damp; the walls are sweating and the furniture seems warm and veined, somehow alive. David loosens his tie with a finger and grapples with the window sash, sliding it up haltingly– Jack's body in his room is suddenly strange. It is too intimate.

Jack is whistling under his breath, casual, eyeing the room in his slow way. "Nice, Davey. World class view 'n' everythin'."

"What? Um, yeah," David says. He has called for service, and suddenly wants the valet there, another body in the room. Jack wanders over to his bedside table and begins thumbing wetly through his notebook with a tactlessness that David remembers. He is not sure whether to laugh or yell.

"Don't do that," he says, peeling away his wet jacket and throwing it onto the foot of the bed.

"These ain't words," Jack says, wrinkling his nose.

"What?"

"You don't write in proper words."

David tries not to smile. "It's shorthand, Jack. Helps me write quickly, when I need to."

Jack leans back and shoots David a look over his shoulder. It makes him feel pinned, examined like an insect. He feels spread.

"Who taught you that?" Jack asks, smiling. "Denton teach you that?"

David feels his face heat, and does not know why. There is a knock at the door; it is the valet with his cart, his cigarettes and wines and whiskeys and soaps. David selects a bottle of Old Valley and fumbles deep in his pocket for a tip. He thinks suddenly of what he would be doing now if he hadn't found Jack, if his old friend wasn't here with him, in his hotel room across the country, lingering by the bed, one hand still in his notebook.

He would be back in the city. Not thinking of Jack.

One second thought, he points to a package of cigarettes as well, frowning, as though in surprise at himself. The valet has spotted Jack, but is fastidious, and will not look at him directly. He deliberately places two glasses on the tray alongside the whiskey and cigarettes. His right eyebrow is cleanly arched. David swallows, takes the tray, and thanks him, gazes straight ahead, candid and guilty.

"Real quick," Jack says, as the door clicks softly shut.

"Yeah. You want a towel?"

"Naw," his friend says. "Be dry in here soon enough. Real warm. Hey," his eyes light on the cigarettes. "Thanks, Davey."

"It's alright," David says, embarrassed, setting the tray down on the table and crossing to the water closet. His pulse thrums like a moth in his wrists. He grabs the towel off the rack and runs it over his hair, scrubbing his wet curls, closing his eyes. In the other room, he hears the deep note of a cork wrested from a bottle.

"Electric light, huh?" Jack is saying. David breathes out.

"What?"

"Light's electric."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Huh."

Jack is waiting for him, a glass in each hand.

"Thanks," David says, glancing at his friend's face. Jack is watching him. "Take a seat, why don't you?"

"Naw," Jack shrugs. "Don't feel much like sittin'. How long it take Denton to teach you writing?"

"Excuse me?" David tries to smile, but does not. He takes a shot of the whiskey instead.

"How long it take Denton to teach you writing?" Jack repeats, unwavering. "I thought you already knew how to write. Didn't school teach you that?" David watches the way he swirls the whiskey in the cup, how it creeps up the sides, slides down in thick veins. "Or you need Denton to teach you that?"

"You learn how to write academic papers in school," David says slowly. "You don't learn how to write like a newspaper man. Denton had experience."

Jack's mouth bleeds into a dark grin. "I bet he did."

David frowns and takes another sip, feeling his stomach clench around the whiskey. Jack is still smiling, he is telling a joke that David does not get, because David doesn't want to get it. He is suddenly tired, suddenly frustrated; he had forgotten how completely Jack could hold you hostage. He had forgotten his fits of camaraderie, his bursts of black humour, his pale streak of nastiness. His cruelties.

"Why you wanna talk about Denton?" He asks. The whiskey pulses in him, he is losing his diction, slipping back into the city. He clears his throat. "Let's talk about something else."

"Sure," Jack says, still smiling. "You wanna talk about the city?"

"What about it?"

"Well I don't know, Davey," Jack counters. "What you invite me up here to talk about?"

"I don't know," David says.

"So what about women?" Jack says, and steps forward. He is fingering his glass, running his tongue along his lower teeth. David can see it. "You ain't married you said."

"You know I'm not," David is ashamed to find himself mumbling.

"Oh. Yeah," Jack grins. "What about Denton? Denton married?" He is close now, almost. David's heart pounds at the back of his tongue.

"I don't know," David says shortly. The woman at the newspaper stand, her mouth. "Probably. Maybe."

"Yeah," Jack says slowly, eyes tight on David's. He takes a long sip of his drink, nearly draining it, and David can see his tongue hit the rim of the glass, linger there. "Probably. Maybe."

David is being mocked, and he knows it. He remembers it, like the way the body remembers, and his frown is a relic, a souvenir of youth. Jack is smiling again, tongue poking between his teeth. Biting.

"What?" David snaps, surprising himself. "What do you want?"

Jack raises his eyebrows. And laughs. He is laughing at David. "Me?" He repeats. "What do _I _want? Oh, Davey…" David opens his mouth, but Jack has reached forwards, taken David's whiskey, and placed it on the table. His own too. He turns back to David, and he is not smiling in the same way. He is different. "Alright," he says, gently, as though in apology. "Alright," he repeats, and reaches forward. David feels something rear up inside of him, something wild and keening, and he knocks Jack's hands away.

"David," Jack says kindly, smiling, but David reaches out and puts his hands on Jack's shoulders, shoving hard. His own anger shocks him, it is hot and confused, it creeps up the back of his throat. He wants to fight, he realizes. He wants to fight Jack, he wants the closeness of bodies, he wants Jack to understand. "David," Jack repeats, but there is something ugly pawing at the inside of his chest, something calling, and he shoves him again, harder. Jack grunts, and David feels it deep inside him, that noise. He clenches one fist, but Jack gets a hand on his collar, hauls him over to the wall, and smacks him against it. It is the hardest he has ever handled him, and David's fingers loosen, his head lolls. There is a dizzy second where he feels Jack's hands come to rest on the front of his shirt, pressing him, sliding into prints that has carried on his chest, under the skin, for seven years. David feels his heart beating, it is in Jack's palm.

"David," Jack repeats, breathing hard through his nose. David knocks his hands away again, his throat tight, his mouth wet. "You wanna fight me? You're fightin' about the wrong thing."

"Don't touch me," David mumbles, staring hard at the ground.

"Lissen," Jack sighs. He slowly lifts his palms, fingers spread, and places them gingerly against David's chest. "There. See?" David's heart bangs, it howls. Jack steps a little bit closer, David can hear him breathing. "I'm sorry you're mad," Jack says finally. His fingers press, his palms slide. "You were always so mad, Davey. When you were a kid."

"You think you know that?" David snaps, surprised at his voice, how it cracks.

"Yeah, I did," Jack answers. "Not everyone did. But I did."

"Oh yeah?" David says, but he is quieter now, he is overcome. He can feel Jack's hands so clearly through the thin material of his shirt. Jack looks at him hard, and David feels like he is being skinned. "Why did you leave?" He asks quietly. Jack doesn't look away.

"You know why I left."

"I really don't."

"Davey," Jack says softly, and it feels like the fire escape, years and years ago. A lifetime ago. It feels like everyone else is very far away. The rain knocks at the walls, it bleeds over the windowsill and wets the carpet. "You feel better?"

"Yeah," David lies. Jack takes another step, closes the distance. "Jack?"

"Yeah?" Jack asks. David means to say something, but Jack's palm is suddenly on his neck. His heart pauses, takes a breath. Jack's thumb is along the shelf of his jawline, Jack's hand is close and clumsy. David swallows.

"I…"

"Don't worry about it," Jack says, lightly. He is breathing hard through his nose, watching David's eyes, waiting for the panic, watching for flight. "You're nervous as a spooked horse, you know that?"

David swallows again, because their foreheads are touching. Jack holds him there, in his hands and against the wall, like an animal. He pauses, clumsily strokes at his face, at his throat.

"Jack," David tries to be firm, but his voice feels soft, childish. "I don't understand."

"Yeah. I know. Me neither, alright?" Jack soothes. "Just…"

Their mouths brush, casual as an accident. David thinks of his sister, crawling through the window and laughing. He thinks of his mother, and her smile. Jack kisses him then, like a girl, and all of a sudden David is stumbling, he is understanding, he is grabbing at Jack as though he is the last thing on earth.

* * *

"_You're not old," David had said, looking down at his glass. He could see the print from his lip on the rim, the slow ooze of the liquor inside, the sharpness of ice. A pause, and Bryan's gruff, short laughter._

"_I don't feel old," he said shortly. David took another shot of the liquor. Bryan refilled his glass._

_That was how it started, he thinks later. That moment was what his life had been pointed at, like a finger, or a gun. Bryan refilled his glass and they drank, and then they drank again. They toasted one another, they toasted the Tribune, they toasted Joseph Pulitzer, and David's laughter felt like it was bubbling in his throat, bursting from his lips. Bryan gave him a cigarette, it made his head spin, made his own spit taste strange in his mouth. After his sixth drink, he stopped looking at the clock. _

"_Laudo, laudes, laude," David slurred, grinning. "Laudamus, laudatuus, laudes." They were on Bryan's sofa at that point, a rigid, stuffed horsehair. How were they there? Bryan had been reenacting a tense moment from Roosevelt's charge on the living room rug, and had gone down on his bad knee, and had to be dragged, laughing. By David. David had dragged him._

"_To love?" Bryan asked, after a moment. He looked almost like someone that David might not know._

"_To praise," David corrected with a grin. "So you have…ha, so now _you_ have to take a drink."_

"_Ah!" Bryan groaned. "Well then. Cheers. It's been a while since I was in school."_

"_Yeah, when was that, the revolutionary war?" David could barely stop his laughter. It sprung from him, a deep well. Bryan's smile came up from under, and pinned him at the corners. _

"_I could still whoop you, boy."_

"_Yes, sir," David laughed, and the scotch slipped over his bottom lip. Bryan poured him another. David drank._

"_But the brigade was nothing like the Philippines," Bryan was saying. "Camaraderie. You understand?"_

"_Yes, sir."_

"_Good men. Good men in a just war. The Philippines was a farce. It was sick, David, sick."_

"_Yes, sir."_

"_Why…" Bryan's grin grew soft at the corners. "Why are you calling me sir all of a sudden?"_

"_I dunno," David laughed. Bryan watched him laugh. "You're my teacher, aren't you?"_

"_I guess I am," Bryan said slowly. He caught at David's hand, removed the whiskey glass. He sloppily turned his palms in his own, looking. David's heart, that stranger, sped. _

"_What?" he asked after a moment._

"_Nasty blisters," Denton said, thumbing one. David flinched, brought it to his mouth and sucked. Bryan watched. "They still hurt?"_

"_No," David mumbled around his finger. The rain roared at the window, flew in beneath the open sill, soaked the carpet. He could still taste the cigarette in his mouth, and he could smell it all over Bryan. It was late, the street were empty. New York City seemed years away._

"_David," Bryan said, still watching his hand, his mouth. "I think…I think I may very well…be drunk."_

_David laughed, ran his tongue along his nail, grinned sloppily. _

"_I want you to know," Bryan was saying carefully, enunciating every corner of every word. "That even though I've acted as a mentor I consider…I consider you to be a friend."_

"_Bryan," David grinned. "Of course. I consider you…I mean, of course. I'm honored. I'm honored you consider me your friend." He laughed shortly, felt it die in his mouth. "You're…I mean, I think you're my friend."_

"_Good," Bryan smiled, and lay a hand on David's shoulder. His palm was heavy but kind, the weight a comfort. "That's good." David looked at him. He seemed gentler at this distance, his face warmed with scotch, his shirt hanging lazily open at the buttons. Under the lip of the material, David saw his mentor's skin, sunned and lined. He felt something bloom up from beneath his stomach; it warmed him, thawed him. He felt like a teenager again, a young length of muscle stretched to the sun, the light touching him everywhere. He moved without thinking, slowly, as though through water. He saw his hands reaching up and closing Bryan's buttons, pressing back his collar, smoothing. He raised his eyes, feeling the smile drop from his face, and watched his hands push the loose strands of hair off Bryan's forehead, felt the grease slick his palm. _

"_There," he said. _

_Bryan's face had changed under David's touch. He was still, but it was the stillness of a caged animal, with something thrumming beneath the skin. He suddenly lay his hand hard against David's cheek, pressed at the corner of his lips, thumb alongside his nose. His other hand dropped to David's thigh, rubbed briefly, fell still._

"_You seem so lonely, David," was what he said. He swallowed, nervous. "You seem so sad. You just…" David's eyes dropped to his own hands, lying pale, his blistered finger still angry, raw and wet. Bryan was rubbing his thigh now, pushing, kneading, and David felt it in every inch of his body. He suddenly could not move._

"_I'm not," David said, and Bryan reached up and gripped him, hard. The noise that escaped David was brief and childish, and he curved onto Bryan's shoulder, around his hand. His mind sparked and buzzed, he realized that Bryan was stroking him, working him, undoing his trousers and pulling out his shirt and reaching in. It was fast like the clattering and dash of carriage wheels, like a sprint down an alley. Bryan gripped him again, and the shock of his bare, damp palm, close and intimate, made him jerk like a fish. _

"_Don't be nervous," Denton told him, going fast, and David pooled backwards, spine curving, slumping against the arm of the sofa. He saw his own hands reaching for Bryan's shoulder, his face, his arms. He felt, for the first time within him, a cavity, a well, a hole roughly the size and shape of a hard, flat body. _

"_Do you do this with girls?" Denton asked him, and David curled, whined. "It's okay," Bryan whispered, Bryan soothed, "It's okay, David." He felt everything in him pooling around Bryan's closed fist, felt a long rope inside of him growing taut and quivering. Somewhere inside of him, too, for the first time in years, was a golden face, open planed and flashing sharp canines, a streak of red knotted at the throat, and David was breaking, opening into Bryan's hand, hollering roughly, and also scrambling, clawing away from Bryan and the sofa, grabbing blindly at his shirttail._

"_David," Bryan said. "David! Wait. Damn!"_

"_No," David mumbled, slurred, falling from the sofa, pushing himself to his feet, falling again. He felt Bryan's fingers shortly at his hip and swung his arm behind him, the back of his hand catching at the rough jawbone. "Don't!" _

"_David, please just wait," Bryan said, and David heard the catch in the newspaperman's voice, the hinge. He staggered across the carpet, catching his hip on a chair and nearly knocking it over, eyes hard and unseeing. He thought of the stones clipping his forehead, the blood dribbling down over his temple and eyebrows. He thought of his sister, and what she would say. _

"_Leave me alone!" David yelled as Bryan caught him at the door. His limbs jerked, kicked, and Bryan spun him around and smacked him to the wall, hands pressed hard against his narrow chest. His eyes, he realized, we wet and streaming, he smelled salt and scotch and something hot. He wasn't drunk anymore. He turned his head. _

"_David," Bryan was breathing hard. "I…look, I didn't understand. Okay? I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I did that to you."_

_David's mouth crumpled, he said nothing, breathing hard through his nose. _

"_Look at me, David. Damn it, David, please."_

"_I'm not like that," David said, and for a long time, Bryan didn't say anything. David waited, listening to the sound of the rain, suddenly loud in his mentor's apartment. His heart was twisted hard, like a sheet, like the dishrag at home when his mother took it in her two hands and wrung it out over the dish basin. _

"_You can go if you want to go," Bryan said. His voice was thin, roughened. "But David, I only thought that…"  
_

_David knocked away his hands and grabbed at the door, spilled out into the hall, jaw clenched hard as a fist. He didn't hear what Bryan thought, he could only hear his heart roaring at the insides of his head, only heard his feet in their thin shoes as he ran down the hall, down the stairs, out into the dark, wet street._

* * *

I've been neglectful and absent and rude. I hope you can forgive me. I'm so sorry that I've been away two years, but the final chapter is almost done. If you're still reading, I want to thank you.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

Jack lights a cigarette.

David is on his back, curled in sheets slick to the skin, staring into the dark. Jack is propped up against the headboard in a lithe slump. David can hear the funnel of his throat, the smoke rushing in, flowering out. The rain is easing off; it is still a hot night, but his breath is rough and cool. He feels as though he has broken the surface. He has come up for air, and it stings him.

"Your family know?" Jack asks. His voice is a quiet purr now, rough as a cat's tongue. David licks his lips.

"Know what?" He asks.

He hears Jack smile.

"I'm not," David says determinedly. In the close dark, a million miles from anyone he has ever loved, it is true. He isn't. Just for Jack, he thinks, as Jack's hand finds his hair, tousles, and grips. His flesh is blazing where it has been touched, he is glowing like an electric light.

"Don't tell them," Jack says after a while. "They don't understand." Another pause, longer. "Don't tell your sister," he says.

"I'm not telling Sarah," David says quietly. Jack pauses, slowly nods, and then they are quiet together, listening to the desert outside the window.

Jack finishes the cigarette and nixes it with his fingers, dropping the butt onto the nightstand. He twists his body until he is lying next to David, reaches for him, takes him in his hand and squeezes.

"You ready to go again?" He asks in his ear, hoarse. He strokes him until he is, and David's mouth opens, keens. He nods, and Jack's rangy, hard body covers him, rolls over him like a warm wave.

* * *

Jack keeps him up all night.

Each time, he lets David lie back on the damp pillows for a quiet moment after, mouth gaped and pale eyelids shut. Each time he smokes a cigarette and stares out the dark window. And each time he wakes him again, nudging at his cheekbone with his forehead, biting at his white shoulder with hungry teeth, or folding him into his mouth and holding him there until he is hard again, waking.

"Come on, Davey," he says in to his ear each time his eyes open, every time his hands reach out and find his friend's shoulders, his face, suddenly there in darkness. "This could be the last time."

And so David is held this way, between sleep and wakefulness, between a dream and the tender fact of Jack's body impossibly close and shockingly warm to the touch. Their bodies move in sync, through the sheets, slipping against one another and then catching, holding. When David does not know what to do Jack takes his hands and shows him. When David is too loud, Jack reaches around his head and lets his friend bite hard against his forearm. David does not think about Denton. He does not think about anything. He is simply a body in Jack's care, a cluster of nerves and muscles and bone stretched against Jack's chest, humming and alive.

"You do this in the city?" Jack asks him hotly against his ear, pressed hard up against his back.

"Naw," David groans.

He feels Jack grin against the back of his neck. "You're doin' real good Davey," he croons, tongue between his teeth, and David's heart turns over in his chest like a wounded animal.

He is finally lost to sleep at seven, as the horizon melts into dove gray, then pale blue, then a shocking, fleshy pink. Jack is awake. He sits up and smokes another cigarette, watching the sunrise, listening to the rotation of the clock. In a slow moment, David thinks he feels Jack's mouth press clumsily against his jaw, his neck, his shoulder, and then there is nothing, just absence, an accustomed void. He rolls over, burrowing his face into the pillow, his hand reaching out and curling around nothing. When he wakes up a few hours later, the light is wide and hot and Jack is gone.

He sits up in bed. The sheets smell of salt and are stiff against his legs. He is raw like a wound, but he manages to sit quietly, cool and dry and empty, watching the sun climb up the sky.

* * *

His train leaves later in the day, so David Jacobs has ample time to fold his clothes, pack his bags, and seal the finished article in a neat envelope. He places the envelope and his notebook carefully into his satchel, taking care that neither is bent, and lays the satchel neatly up against his suitcase. After a long while of staring, he rinses the whiskey glasses out in the washbasin and sweeps the cigarette butts into the basket. The pack and the bottle of Old Valley have vanished. When David checks his wallet, he is not surprised to see that the money inside it has vanished as well. He stands very still for a long time, before blinking hard, clearing his throat, and seeing to the rest of his things.

With everything done, he rests, sitting quietly on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. It will be good to get back to the flat, he tells himself. Good to be in his own bed, to be amongst his own things, to walk the route to his work that he knows as well as his own heart. He realizes, with a start, that his parents are expecting him back today. He should have spent the last three days on the train. He thinks of these days, and marvels.

He will wire them from the station. He will explain his relationship with Stevens.

_You drive me crazy with worry_, he hears his mother's voice, and he smiles. "Miss you," he says softly, and he can almost see Sarah's ironic smile, her knowing eyes. Outside, a child yells in Spanish. The wind blows.

He waits half an hour, and then rises to his feet. He straightens his collar, pulls on his jacket, and works his feet into shoes that have been bleached with dust. He will have to get them polished, once he gets back to the city. He reaches for his satchel, but stops, straightens, and turns to the bed. The dark quilt, the dimpled pillows. Without thinking, he moves towards it, stretches out his body along its length, and then rolls over, burying his face in linen. He breathes in, and Jack is there, next to him, unbearably close, strong and slow.

* * *

David leaves his room. There is no car waiting for him outside, and he suspects his absence from Stevens' exclusive soiree cost him this convenience. But he is a New Yorker. Her doesn't mind the walk.

"Mr. Jacobs?" A young voice in the lobby. It is the valet from last night, shined and polished as an apple in the new morning. David nods, remembering the scaled eyebrows, but the boy is extraordinarily decorous, and keeps his eyes firmly turned away. "Message for you."

The envelope bears the name of the hotel at its top, and underneath it David's name and the date, written in a firm, mannish script. David nods his thanks, clears his throat, and turns to go. The streets are still dampened, the dust tamed, and so it is with clear eyes that he tears off the top of the envelope and unfolds the personalized stationary inside.

_Dearest Friend,_

_Such a shame to have missed you last night. Company at Stevens' was v. charming; yours truly had a great spell of luck at cards. Nevertheless I had to leave early, though I did manage to spot you and Mr. Seamus McMahon heading into the Hotel New Mexico. A bit late for a nightcap, but I'm glad to see you took my advice about sticking to the plaza – we tourist chaps have to keep an eye on one another don't we? _

_I write this in lieu of a proper farewell. I'm sure you're aware by now that I travelled here as a backer of Stevens' project and as one heavily invested in its longevity I will – alas! – remain in Santa Fe for three more days before returning to Philadelphia where I will be awaiting your glowing review of our little operation – the Tribune is such an excellent paper that I'm renewing my subscription. I'm __certain__ I will find your piece to be complimentary. If there has been any occurrence that may have swayed your opinion, I'm sure Mr. McMahon will be able to explain this misfortune to Stevens directly. _

_V. happy at having made your acquaintance, wish you best of luck._

_Sincerely,_

_Fitz_

_PS All jokes of kissing and canoes aside, do settle down soon, young Jacobs. People may begin to talk. _

David stares at the signature in the blazing light. He feels nothing, except for a little fatigue. So their hands were at his throat. It wasn't exactly newsworthy. His mouth is dry, but he laughs a little, before folding the letter into neat quarters, placing it in his breast pocket, and stepping out into the street.

* * *

The train station is not busy, so David does not have to search every face for the one he wants. Just a few figures in the haze – a woman and a child, three men striding off the platform and down into the street, a porter sweeping the dirt from the steps. David watches him work, watches the dust blooming and settling exactly the way it was before. He feels like laughing, and then immediately, like yelling. Like howling.

He sits uneasily on a bench, placing his suitcase and his satchel close by his feet, a New York habit. Like it or not, he thinks, the city is in me. It is in my bones. He thinks of his mother, his father, Les. He thinks of Sarah. He thinks of his coworkers, his boss, of his apartment and his bed and his window, where the light comes through. All of it in his bones. And Jack. Jack too. He holds his head steady, keeps his neck still. He looks straight ahead.

When the train comes he has to throw an arm up over his face as the smoke floods the platform. When it clears, he picks up his things, stands. The door to his car opens and the porter is there, clean and stiff at the beginning of the journey, already reaching for his bags. David lifts them through, puts one dusty shoe on the stair, and then stops. He turns for one last look, but it is hard to see the street through the ash, and there is no one there anyway. In this heat.

He steps up into the car. For a second he thinks he hears a voice at his ear, but the train whistle blows, and it is gone.

* * *

**Only Time of Day**

Thank you Ankeel, PolyesterRage, and especially Falco for helping me so much.

Thank you Earl Grey, Macallan single malt, and Galuoises.

Thank you so much for reading, from the very bottom of my heart. I know I've been criminal in my prolonged absences, and I'm grateful you saw me through. I'm honoured to be a part of this community: keep writing, reviewing, critiquing, rewriting, creating. I'll see you next time.


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